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Great  Pictures 

AS  MORALlteACHERS 


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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2011  with  funding  from 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


http://www.archive.org/details/greatpicturesasmOOjack 


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Great  Pictures 

as 
Moral  Teachers 


I*      APR    4  1911      *: 


GREAT  PICTURES  AS 
MORAL  TEACHERS 


With  twenty  reproductions  of  photo- 
graphs from  originals  of  painting  and 
sculpture,  each  accompanied  by  an 
interpretation ;  also  an  introduction 
on   the    use    of   pictures    in    teaching. 


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BY 


HENRY  E.  JACKSON 


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Author    of 

"Benjamin  West,     His   Life   and   Work.  " 
"The  Message  of  the  Modern  Minister." 


THE  JOHN  C.  WINSTON  COMPANY 

PHILADELPHIA 


Copyright  1910,  by 
The  John  C.    Winston  Co. 


CONTENTS 


"The  good  picture  front  an  educational  point  of  view,  is  either 
like  a  sermon,  teaching  a  great  moral  truth,  or  like  a  poem,  ideal- 
izing some  important  aspect  of  life." 

G.  Stanley  Hall. 


LIST  OF  REPRODUCTIONS 

PAGE 

I,  "Hope" George  F.  Watts  33 

II.  "Wise  and  Foolish  Virgins".  .  .  .  R.  Rinaldi  45 

III.  "Sir  Galahad" George  F.  Watts  57 

IV.  "The  Ruins" James  Tissot  69 

V.  "The  Magdalene" Guercino  81 

VI.  "David  and  Saul" Simeon  Solomon  93 

VII.  "Love  and  Death" George  F.  Watts  105 

VI 1 1.  "The  Scapegoat" Holman  Hunt  1 17 

IX.  "Jacob's  Ladder" Murillo  131 

X.  "Death  and  the  Sculptor"  Daniel  C.French  145 

XI.  "The  Pursuit  of  Pleasure" Henneherg  159 

XII.  "Christ  in  Gethsemane" Hofmann  171 

XII I.  "Sic  Transit  Gloria  Mundi"  George  F.  Watts  185 

XIV.  "Christ  and  the  Fishermen".  .  Zimmermann  197 
XV.  "St.  Michael  and  the  Dragon"  . .  Guido  Reni  209 

XVI.  "Ecce  Homo" Antonio  Ciseri  223 

XVII.   "Temptation  in  the  Wilderness"   Wm.  Dyce  235 

XVI 1 1.  "The  Angels'  Kitchen" Murillo  253 

XIX.  "Christ  Bound  to  the  Column"  . .//  Sodoma  265 
XX.  "Destiny  and  Humanity".  .  .  Jef.  Leempoels  279 


(9) 


"7m  the  actual  to  discern  the  ideal,  in  the  appearance  to  pene- 
trate to  the  reality,  without  taking  leave  of  the  material  to  reveal 
the  spiritual — this  is  the  mystery  and  vocation  of  the  artist,  and 
his  achievement  is  art." 

NOYES. 


LIST  OF  INTERPRETATIONS 

PAGE 

I.  The  Religion  of  To-morrow  Morning 37 

II.  Character  not  Transferable 49 

III.  The  Eyes  of  the  Heart 61 

IV,  The  Measure  of  Sympathy 73 

V.  Deliverance  through  Love 85 

VI.  The  Language  of  the  Face 97 

VII.  Death  as  a  Private  Tutor   1 09 

VIII.  An  Enemy  of  Himself 121 

IX.  The  Use  of  Dreams 135 

X.  Death  not  an  End,  but  an  Incident 149 

XI.  Happiness  a  By-Product 163 

XII.  The  Heroism  of  Jesus 175 

XIII.  A  Disappointed  Man 1 89 

XIV.  They  Who  Trust  Us  Educate  Us 201 

XV.  The  Human  Heart  a  Battle  Field 213 

XVI.  An  Unavoidable  Question 227 

XVI I .  Temptation  as  Opportunity 239 

XVIII.  The  Commonplace  made  Uncommon 257 

XIX.  The  Invulnerable  Man 269 

XX.  The  Inspiration  of  the  Imperfect 283 


(II) 


Introduction 

on 

The  Use  of  Pictures  in  Teaching 


The  principle  of  art  is  the  incarnation  of  God's  eternal  beauty: 
The  principle  of  religion  is  the  incarnation  of  God's  eternal  human 
heart.  Neither  can  do  the  other's  work,  yet  their  work  is  comple- 
mentary, and  I  wish  the  divorce  between  them  were  more  nearly 
healed.  I  wish  the  artists  felt  ^nore  of  the  need  which  art  can 
never  -fill;  I  wish  the  religious  felt  ynore  of  the  need  that  art  alone 
can  fill," 

Principal  Forsyth. 


THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING 

A   UNIVERSAL    LANGUAGE 

There  never  was  a  time,  when  the  educational  value 
of  pictorial  art  was  more  generally  recognized  than  it  is 
to-day.  That  pictures  are  more  used  now  than  ever 
before,  is  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  time  is  more  valuable 
than  ever  before,  and  pictures  are  time-savers.  They 
represent  to  the  eye,  what  it  would  take  much  longer  to 
tell  to  the  ear.  They  do  a  work  of  mental  economy,  and 
this  is  a  real  service,  for  the  less  time  and  strength  it  takes 
to  get  an  idea,  the  more  will  be  left  to  use  and  enjoy  it. 
The  right  use  of  pictures,  therefore,  rests  on  sound 
principles  of  teaching.  A  truth  which  reaches  the  mind 
through  the  ear  gate  and  the  eye  gate  at  the  same  time, 
doubles  the  impression.  Psychologists  tell  us  that  sense 
impressions  received  through  sight  are  of  a  higher  order 
than  those  received  through  any  other  sense.  We  say, 
"in  one  ear  and  out  the  other."  We  do  not  say,  "in 
one  eye  and  out  the  other."  That  pictures  are  of  great 
value  in  teaching  certain  forms  of  knowledge  is  not  now 
questioned;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  approved  and  practiced. 

(is) 


1 6  THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING 

In  view  of  this  fact,  it  is  surprising  that  there  is  so 
h'ttle  use  made  of  really  great  art  in  religious  teaching. 
Time  was  when  art  rendered  religion  an  incalculable 
service.  From  the  Edict  of  Milan  to  the  Reformation, 
the  church  was  the  patron  of  art.  In  the  days  when  the 
truths  of  religion  were  preached  in  Latin  to  people  who 
could  scarcely  have  understood  them  even  in  their  own 
tongue,  the  sacred  story  was  told  in  the  universal  lan- 
guage of  the  painter  and  the  sculptor.  For  the  masses 
the  painter's  brush  has  taught  the  Christian  story  more 
convincingly  than  the  pen  of  the  theologian.  Works 
of  art  were  the  people's  Bible.  But  the  Puritanism  of  the 
Reformation  divorced  art  from  religion,  and  as  in  Greece 
art  killed  religion,  so  in  Christian  Europe  religion  killed 
art.  The  protest  of  Puritanism  against  art  was  made  in 
the  heat  of  conflict,  and  was  therefore  one-sided  and 
prejudiced.  Religious  people  to-day  have  regained  a 
truer  perspective  and  a  saner  judgment.  They  see  that 
the  abuse  of  a  thing  is  no  sufficient  reason  for  its  disuse 
altogether.  They  see  that  to  present  truth  in  the  form 
of  beauty  is  not  a  hindrance,  but  a  help,  to  truth.  They 
see  that  the  Bible  has  been  denied  the  imagination  as  an 
aid,  and  its  value  has  been  lessened  in  consequence. 
They  see  that  the  function  of  art  is  to  render  visible  the 
Divine  and  it  is,  therefore,  not  a  foe,  but  a  friend  of 
religion. 


THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING  17 

The  religious  world  is  beginning  to  turn  to  art  with  a 
new  spirit.  This  may  be  due  in  part  to  the  fact  that 
undiscerning  condemnation  leads  to  indiscriminate  ap- 
proval. It  is  due  even  more  to  the  ease  with  which  the 
public  now  has  access  to  the  originals  of  great  pictures, 
or  may  possess  copies  of  them.  As  the  printing-press 
ushered  in  the  democracy  of  learning,  the  camera  ushered 
in  the  democracy  of  art,  and  the  pictures  that  were  once 
found  only  in  the  great  collections,  or  in  the  homes  of  the 
few,  are  now  found  everywhere  in  reproductions.  The 
very  multitude  of  pictures  in  the  people's  hands  brings 
with  it  a  great  danger  and  produces  a  crying  need;  the 
need  of  careful  selection  and  of  educating  the  popular 
taste.  The  present  work  makes  an  attempt  to  do  what 
it  can  to  meet  this  need. 

Whether  we  will  or  not,  the  child  will  visualize  the 
stories  he  hears.  He  makes  images  of  the  characters  and 
incidents  of  the  Bible.  To  render  him  the  best  service, 
in  this  process,  only  the  best  pictures  ought  to  be  put 
into  his  hands.  Poor  pictures  will  do  more  harm  than 
good,  for  they  will  give  false  notions  which  must  later  be 
unlearned.  Here,  as  everywhere  else,  the  good  is  not  to 
be  substituted  for  the  best.  Coleridge  would  sometimes 
say,  after  looking  at  a  picture,  "There  is  no  use  in  stop- 
ping at  this,  for  I  see  the  painter  had  no  idea.  It  is  mere 
technical  drawing."     In  every  great  picture  there  are 


1 8  THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING 

two  elements,  the  idea  and  its  expression.  There  ought 
to  be  no  disparity  between  these,  for  in  proportion  as  an 
artist  values  the  thought  he  portrays,  he  will  spare  no 
pains  in  perfecting  his  technique.  All  truly  great  art 
is  both  adequate  in  form  and  significant  in  content.  For 
this  work  only  those  pictures  were  selected  which  are 
considered  great,  both  from  the  standpoint  of  the  artist, 
and  from  that  of  the  teacher  and  people  as  well. 

HOW   A    PAINTING   DIFFERS    FROM   A    PHOTOGRAPH. 

If  pictorial  art  is  to  do  real  service  for  religion  it  is 
of  first  importance  to  keep  in  mind  the  distinction,  made 
by  Henry  Turner  Bailey,  between  a  view  and  a  picture. 
That  distinction,  in  brief,  is  that  a  view  is  taken  directly 
from  nature,  whilst  a  picture  is  composed  to  embody  an 
idea.  Views  are  valuable  aids  in  creating  mental  images 
of  places  outside  of  one's  experience.  Views  may  serve 
as  a  background  of  actual  occurrences.  The  view  of  a 
city  "so  compacted  together"  that  a  woman  on  her  own 
housetop  could  drop  a  stone  upon  the  head  of  a  King  pass- 
ing in  the  middle  of  the  street  below;  a  bed  of  such 
proportions  that  a  man  could  pick  it  up  and  carry  it 
through  a  crowd  to  his  own  house;  a  roof  that  could  be 
opened  by  four  men  without  creating  a  panic  in  the 
packed  congregation  below;  photographic  views  of  such 
elements  as  these  in  Biblical  scenes,  serve  to  give  one 


THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING  19 

vivid  images.  It  ought  to  be  remembered,  however, 
that  such  photographs  give  one  only  the  mere  externals. 
A  view  of  Jacob's  Well,  for  example,  as  it  is  to-day,  has 
value  only  as  indicating  the  fact  that  the  Well  still  exists. 
It  has  no  value  in  teaching  any  truth  about  the  water  of 
life.  The  truth  that  Jesus  presented  to  the  woman  of 
Samaria  is  vastly  more  important  than  any  fact  about 
the  Well.     Truth  is  always  more  important  than  facts. 

The  difference  between  a  view  and  a  picture  is  like 
this:  If  the  brain  cap  of  a  man  could  be  removed  and  a 
photograph  of  the  brain,  in  active  work,  could  be  taken, 
what  would  it  reveal?  It  would  reveal  only  decomposi- 
tion and  recomposition,  molecular  agitations  and  vibra- 
tions. These  are  physical  phenomena.  There  is  abso- 
lutely nothing  else  which  the  eye  can  see.  But  the  man 
on  whom  the  operation  is  performed,  what  does  he  see? 
He  is  conscious  of  an  entirely  different  set  of  phenomena. 
He  is  conscious  of  thought,  emotion,  will,  hopes,  aspira- 
tions, and  ideals.  The  photograph  gives  one  the  external 
physical  facts.  The  artist's  picture  gives  one  the  true 
inwardness  of  the  same  facts.  Art  does  not  deal  with 
things  as  they  are  in  themselves.  Science  does  that. 
But  art  deals  exclusively  with  things  as  they  affect  the 
human  soul.  "Science,"  says  Ruskin,  "studies  the 
relations  of  things  to  each  other,  but  art  studies  only  their 
relation  to  man;  and  it  requires  of  everything  which  is 


20  THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING 

submitted  to  it  imperatively  this,  and  only  this,  what  that 
thing  is  to  the  human  eyes  and  human  heart."  The 
difference  between  a  view  and  a  picture  is  well  illustrated 
in  human  portraits,  which  Carlyle  thought  were,  of  all 
portraits,  the  welcomest  on  human  walls.  Tennyson 
once  asked  Watts  his  notion  of  what  a  true  portraitist 
should  be.  Watts'  reply  so  impressed  the  poet  that  he 
wrote  it  out  in  the  beautiful  lines,  which  afterwards 
appeared  in  the  poem  of  Elaine  in  "The  Idyls  of  the  King:" 

"As  when  a  painter,  gazing  on  a  face 
Divinely  thro'  all  hindrance,  finds  the  man 
Behind  it,  and  so  paints  him  that  his  face, 
The  shape  and  colour  of  a  mind  and  life, 
Lives  for  his  children  ever  at  its  best." 

The  camera  gives  one  the  physical  features  of  the 
face,  but  the  artist  finds  the  man  behind  them  and  pre- 
serves the  man's  true  spirit  ever  at  its  best.  It  is  the 
artist's  function  to  portray  what  the  camera  cannot  give 
and  what  the  eyes  of  other  men  often  do  not  see.  A 
woman,  looking  once  with  the  English  artist,  Turner,  at 
one  of  his  marvelous  delineations  of  nature,  said  to  him, 
"Mr.  Turner,  I  cannot  see  in  nature  what  you  put  into 
your  pictures."  The  artist's  quiet  answer  v/as,  "Don't 
you  wish  you  could,  Madam?"  Precisely  this  is  the 
artist's  mission,  to  help  us  see,  in  nature  and  in  human 
life,  what  the  physical  eye,  unaided,  could  never  discern. 


THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING  21 

He  is  not  an  artist  who  merely  puts  on  canvas  that 
which  any  man  can  see  with  his  own  eyes.  The  artist's 
function  is  to  show  us  something  we  have  not  seen,  or 
have  only  imperfectly  realized.  Thus  he  becomes  an 
interpreter  and  a  teacher.  The  vast  majority  of  pictures 
now  used  by  Bible  teachers  are  not  pictures  at  all,  but 
merely  views;  and  while  they  serve  to  impart  information, 
they  are  of  little  or  no  value  for  religious  purposes.  It 
is  time  to  turn  to  something  higher.  While  we  use  views 
to  impart  information  on  facts  of  minor  detail,  there  is  an 
inviting  field  for  the  use  of  the  masterpieces  of  art  which 
have  a  spiritual  message. 

THE    SERVICE    WHICH   ART   RENDERS 

Classical  religious  paintings  render  at  least  two  great 
religious  services.  One  is  to  impress  deeply  on  the  mind 
and  heart  some  great  truth  or  Biblical  scene  which  has 
made  only  a  slight  impression  before.  Such  a  service  is 
rendered  by  Holman  Hunt's  picture  of  the  "Scapegoat;" 
this  picture  makes  more  vivid  the  sense  of  desolation 
caused  by  sin,  as  set  forth  in  the  Old  Testament.  There 
is  a  great  opportunity  for  works  of  art,  because  the  Bible 
record  is  very  brief.  The  Bible  expresses  an  important 
truth  in  a  few  verses,  or  in  a  brief  scene  which  may  fail 
to  make  a  deep  impression.  Many  a  picture  does  for  a 
Biblical  scene  what  Browning's  poem  "Saul"  does  for  a 


22-         THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING 

scene  in  Saul's  life.  The  poet  has  taken  an  incident  in  the 
life  of  Saul,  and  by  a  legitimate  use  of  the  imagination, 
has  elaborated  it  into  a  long  poem,  and  by  this  means, 
makes  us  see  the  true  import  of  what  the  Bible  so  briefly 
states. 

Another  great  service  which  classical  pictures  render, 
is  to  call  our  attention  to  a  side  of  some  truth  which  we 
have  never  before  noticed.  Browning  says  this  is  one 
of  art's  great  functions. 

"For  don't  you  mark?    We're  made  so  that  we  love, 
First  when  we  see  them  painted,  things  we  have  passed 
Perhaps  a  hundred  times,  nor  cared  to  see. 
And  so  they  are  better  painted,  better  for  us. 
Which  is  the  same  thing.     Art  was  given  for  that. 
God  uses  us  to  help  each  other  so. 
Lending  our  minds  out." 

Pictures  may  tell  us  what  we  have  often  seen  with 
the  eye,  but  never  grasped.  How  true  this  is  can  be  seen 
by  the  simplest  test.  Ask  almost  any  man  who  has  been 
raised  in  the  country  and  has  seen  apple  trees  a  hundred 
times,  to  tell  you  the  color  of  apple  blossoms.  In  all 
probability  he  does  not  know,  though  he  thinks  he  does. 
If  you  tell  him  that  Dante  says,  "apple  blossoms  are  a 
little  less  than  rose  and  more  than  violet,"  he  will  have 
to  confess  that  he  never  noticed  the  violet  color  in  them, 
but  there  it  is,  as  distinct  as  the  blossom  itself.     An 


THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING  23 

artist's  picture  would  have  given  him  that  fact.  In  like 
manner  Holman  Hunt's  picture,  "Finding  Christ  in  the 
Temple,"  does  a  similar  service.  It  embodies  a  dozen 
passages  of  Scripture  from  Deuteronomy  to  John,  and 
sums  up,  in  small  compass,  all  the  facts  of  the  subject, 
many  of  which  we  may  never  have  noticed.  More  impor- 
tant still,  a  picture  often  opens  up  a  side  of  some  great 
spiritual  truth  which  we  may  never  have  known.  Watts' 
picture,  "Hope,"  embodies  a  trait  of  the  grace  of  hope 
which  is  not  infrequently  passed  over.  The  pictures 
selected  for  this  work  are  those  only  which  make  a  positive 
contribution  to  moral  or  spiritual  truth. 

ART   FOR    art's   SAKE 

There  are  those  who  believe  that  it  is  not  a  legitimate 
function  of  art  to  teach  religious  ideas.  Curiously  enough, 
the  people  who  thus  believe,  belong  to  two  classes  very 
widely  separated  in  other  respects.  One  class  is  that  of 
the  mere  technical  artist,  the  other  is  that  of  the  Puritanic 
type  of  the  religious  man.  Extremes  meet  sometimes, 
when  they  are  extreme  enough.  Both  classes  believe 
in  "Art  for  Art's  Sake."  "Art  for  Art's  Sake"  and  "Art 
for  Truth's  Sake"  have  been  in  conflict  for  many  cen- 
turies, and  the  conflict  represents  a  side  of  one  of  the  old- 
est problems  of  human  history.  It  is  the  conflict  between 
the  Hebrew  and  the  Greek  ideals  of  life.     I  believe  there 


24  •         THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING 

is  a  reconciling  principle  between  the  two.  John  Ruskin 
reconciled  them  in  his  own  person.  It  is  only  because 
of  the  common  human  defect,  which  prevents  us  from 
seeing  more  than  one  side  of  a  truth  at  the  same  time,  that 
we  imagine  there  is  any  antagonism  between  these  two 
ideals. 

If  by  "Art  for  Art's  Sake,"  is  meant  that  beauty  is  an 
end  in  itself,  and  one  of  the  functions  of  art  is  to  give  pleas- 
ure through  beauty,  there  is  nothing  in  this  statement  to 
which  the  religious  man  ought  to  object,  for  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  the  holiness  of  beauty  as  well  as  the  beauty  of 
holiness.  It  ought  to  be  remembered  that  the  early 
Christians  undervalued  beauty  because  the  beauty  they 
saw  about  them  was  an  element  in  a  civilization  which 
was  only  corrupt.  They  put  beauty  away  because,  for 
the  moment,  they  had  to  fight  for  righteousness.  The 
condition  was  only  temporary,  not  complete  or  fmal. 
When  the  crisis  had  passed  and  they  were  free  to  look 
at  life  whole,  they  craved  beauty,  as  before  they  had  craved 
truth.  We  are  so  accustomed  to  look  at  beauty  as  merely 
decorative  and  ornamental  that  we  forget  that  beauty 
is  a  moral  necessity.  God  wrought  beauty  into  the 
structure  of  the  world.  Beauty  is  the  highest  form  of 
righteousness.  Beauty  and  truth  are  not  separated  in 
God's  world,  and  ought  not  to  be  in  our  thought.  It  is 
only  because  we  are  accustomed  to  righteousness  in  its 


THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING  25 

lower  and  cruder  forms,  that  we  have  made  the  separa- 
tion. God,  who  gave  as  much  care  to  painting  a  lily 
as  to  forming  the  eternal  hills,  joined  truth  and  beauty 
in  holy  union,  and  v/hat  God  has  joined  together,  man 
ought  not  to  put  asunder.  Beauty  has  a  moral  value  for 
truth.  To  assert  that  beauty  has  a  moral  value,  does 
not  mean  that  beauty  has  any  pov,er  to  create  the  moral 
or  spiritual  life,  but  the  spiritual  life,  having  been  already 
started,  beauty  is  of  great  service  in  its  development. 
Art  cannot  regenerate  religion,  but  religion  can  regene- 
rate art,  and  ought  to  do  so,  and  thus  utilize  the  help  that 
art  can  give.  "The  Kingdom  of  God, "  says  Martineau 
in  his  "Hours  of  Thought,"  "is  not  a  business  set  up  in 
rivalry  with  worldly  business,  but  a  divine  law  regulating 
and  a  divine  temper  pervading  the  pursuits  of  worldly 
business.  It  does  not  change  the  materials,  but  the  form 
and  spirit  of  our  lives." 

The  universal  love  of  beauty  is  one  of  those  resources 
of  human  life  which  Christianity  ought  to  pervade  v.ith  its 
spirit  and  claim  as  its  own.  It  is  to  this  common  instinc- 
tive love  of  the  beautiful  that  the  artist  makes  his  appeal, 
and,  therefore,  gets  a  wide  hearing  for  the  truth  he  presents 
in  this  universally  loved  form.  The  universality  of  the 
love  of  beauty,  and  what  it  does  for  men,  is  well  stated 
by  Mark  Rutherford  in  his  "  Deliverance. "  "The  desire, " 
he  says,  "to  decorate  existence  in  some  way  or  other  with 


26.         THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING 

more  or  less  care  is  nearly  universal.  The  meanest  and 
most  sensual  almost  always  manifest  an  indisposition  to  be 
content  with  mere  material  satisfaction.  I  have  known 
selfish,  gluttonous,  drunkerf  men  spend  their  leisure 
moments  in  trimming  a  bed  of  scarlet  geraniums,  and  the 
vulgarest  and  most  commonplace  of  mortals  considers 
it  a  necessity  to  put  a  picture  in  the  room  or  an  ornament 
on  the  mantelpiece.  The  instinct,  even  in  its  lowest  forms, 
is  divine.  It  is  the  commentary  on  the  text  that  man 
shall  not  live  by  bread  alone.  It  is  evidence  of  an  acknowl- 
edged compulsion,  of  which  art  is  the  highest  manifesta- 
tion, to  escape." 

If  by  "Art  for  Art's  Sake"  is  meant  that  it  is  not 
the  business  of  art  to  preach  or  moralize,  there  is  nothing 
in  this  statement  to  which  the  religious  man  ought  to 
object,  even  though  he  be  a  preacher.  For  the  preacher 
knows  perfectly  well,  that  if  one  paints  a  picture  of  a 
horse,  and  then  has  to  write  under  it,  "this  is  a  horse," 
it  is  evident  that  the  picture  has  been  poorly  painted, 
and  has  missed  its  aim.  If,  at  the  close  of  a  story,  one 
must  add  the  statement,  "This  is  what  I  meant  to 
teach,"  it  shows  that  the  story  has  been  lamely  told. 

Paul's  letter  to  Philemon  has  done  more  for  the 
liberation  of  slaves  than  any  other  piece  of  writing  in  the 
world,  and  yet  in  it  there  is  not  one  word  of  moralizing 
on  the  evils  of  slavery.     The  letter  simply  preserves  the 


THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING  27 

record  of  Paul's  act  and  attitude  towards  a  runaway 
Christian  slave.  That  act  did  its  own  preaching.  The 
best  preaching  is  always  so  done.  It  is  didactic  indirectly. 
This  is  what  Dr.  Van  Dyke  meant  when  he  prayed,  "  Lord, 
let  me  never  tag  a  moral  to  a  story,  nor  tell  a  story  without 
a  meaning."  So  a  great  work  of  art  embodies  a  spiritual 
truth,  or  fact,  which  speaks  for  itself. 

Whilst  a  great  painting  does  not  need  a  moral  label, 
but  chiefly  needs  only  to  be  "dwelt  on  and  wondered  at," 
yet  a  legitimate  and  needed  service  is  rendered  when  one 
man  tells  another  what  he  sees  in  it,  and  what  it  says  to 
him.  For  a  picture  is  of  no  private  interpretation,  and 
may  even  mean  more  than  the  artist  himself  at  first 
intended,  and  it  often  suggests  more  than  it  says.  G. 
Stanley  Hall  conceives  art  as  dealing  to  a  great  extent 
with  the  future.  Man  is  far  from  complete  and  is  still  in 
the  making.  The  best  things  in  his  history  have  not 
happened  yet.  But  art  is  prophetic.  It  deals  with  what 
we  wish  and  long  for.  Therefore  painting  or  music  will 
suggest  much  more  than  they  say,  and  stir  up  emotions 
that  cannot  be  put  into  words.  They  will,  therefore, 
suggest  more  to  one  man  than  to  another,  and  if  one  man 
tells,  so  far  as  he  can,  what  a  picture  says  to  him,  he  may 
help  others  to  read  the  same  message.  The  interpreta- 
tions which  accompany  the  pictures  in  this  volume  state 
what  they  have  said  to  one  man.     But  since  every  work 


28  THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING 

of  art  has  one  center  of  interest,  or  covers  one  moment 
of  time,  or  embodies  one  central  idea,  the  interpretations 
are  limited  to  pointing  out  the  one  chief  idea  for  which 
each  picture  stands. 

That  art  was  intended  to  embody  such  great  spiritual 
ideas  and  human  interests  for  the  upbuilding  of  men,  few 
will  deny.  If  "Art  for  Art's  Sake,"  meant  that  it  was 
not  so  intended,  then  Christianity,  which  is  the  mother  of 
painting,  will  disown  her  child,  and  Christian  men  could 
no  more  believe  in  "Art  for  Art's  Sake"  than,  as  Chester- 
ton says,  they  could  believe  in  "voting  for  voting's  sake, 
or  in  amputating  for  amputating's  sake."  Art  is  for 
life's  sake.  It  must  always  speak  to  the  great  human  and 
divine  interests  of  men,  and  this  will  always  be  its  basis  of 
general  appeal.  Whilst  real  works  of  art  are  not  moral 
sign-posts  they  are  profoundly  moral,  and  are  necessarily 
so.  Because,  as  Morley  says,  "Morality  is  not  in  the 
nature  of  things,  but  is  the  nature  of  things."  To 
attempt,  therefore,  to  describe  the  nature  of  things  and 
leave  out  the  moral  or  spiritual  side  of  them,  is  to  mis- 
represent them.  All  true  art  is  a  transcript  from  life, 
and  all  art  is  great  in  proportion  as  it  helps  us  to  see  things, 
not  as  they  seem,  but  as  they  are;  in  proportion  as  it 
helps  us  to  see  life,  "steadily  and  see  it  whole." 

Art  is  the  interpretation  of  the  great  eternal  realities 
of  life,  and  as  soon  as  the  artist  tries  to  embody  the  great- 


THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING  29 

est  feelings  and  aspirations,  he  gets  on  Biblical  ground, 
for  there  is  no  great  interest  of  man  which  the  Bible  has 
not  treated.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  great  artists  have 
dealt  so  largely  with  Biblical  themes.  Painting  and  the 
Bible  could  not  be  kept  separate.  They  are  congenial 
companions.  They  have  in  common  one  leading  char- 
acteristic. The  function  of  art  is  to  embody  the  universal 
and  eternal.  It  deals  with  nothing  local  or  temporary. 
Its  symbols  are  concrete,  but  they  are  symbols  of  what  is 
universal  and  true.  The  Madonna  and  Child  are  not 
intended  as  historical  figures,  but  are  types,  and  stand  for 
the  universal  ideas  of  motherhood  and  childhood.  One 
of  the  greatest  services  of  art  is  that  it  looks  at  life  under 
the  aspect  of  eternity;  and  this  is  also  the  Bible's  chief 
characteristic,  and  the  Bible,  for  this  reason,  has  been 
called  eternal  literature.  It  is  concrete  and  historic, 
but  it  describes  all  concrete  acts  in  their  eternal  relations. 
When  it  describes  the  sowing  of  seed  it  immediately 
discloses  the  harvest.  In  every  deed  it  reveals  the  ulti- 
mate results  of  the  deed  in  power  or  misery.  It  does  not 
foretell  by  looking  ahead,  but  by  looking  at  the  heart  of 
things.  It  sees  life  through  the  sense  of  eternity.  The 
chief  characteristic  of  the  Bible  and  of  art  is  the  same. 
They  belong  together. 

When   the    Bible's   spirit   more  generally   pervades 
artists'  work,  and  men  become  more  familiar  with  the 


30  THE  USE  OF  PICTURES  IN  TEACHING 

work  of  such  artists,  then  great  pictures  will  be  "Sabbaths 
to  the  soul,"  and  art  will  render  to  religion  the  service 
which  George  Frederic  Watts,  the  Prophet-painter  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  longed  for  it  to  render.  In  a 
letter  to  Julia  Cartwright,  Watts  said,  "  I  even  think  that 
in  the  future,  and  in  stronger  hands  than  mine,  art  may 
yet  speak,  as  great  poetry  itself,  with  the  solemn  and 
majestic  ring  in  which  the  Hebrew  prophets  spoke  to  the 
Jews  of  old,  demanding  noble  aspirations,  condemning 
in  the  most  trenchant  manner  prevalent  vices,  and  warn- 
ing in  deep  tones  against  lapses  from  morals  and  duties." 
There  is  something  more  to  be  done  in  this  way,  I  believe, 
than  has  yet  been  done. 


Hope 

From  a  painting  by  George  F.  Watts 


HOPE 
By  George  F,  Watts 

This  picture  was  presented  by  the  artist  to  the  Tate  Gallery, 
London,  in  1897.  It  is  four  feet  seven  and  a  half  inches  high 
and  three  feet  seven  and  a  quarter  inches  wide.  The  color  of 
the  flesh  is  a  pale  carnation  tint.  The  twilight  is  dusky  blue, 
the  nebulous  robe  is  light  green.     The  reproduction  is  from  a 

photograph    bv  Hnllvf-r     Tntirl,,n 


I 

Interpretation 
The  Religion  of  To-morrow  Morning 


"  For  by  hope  were  we  saved ;  but  hope  that  is  seen  is  not 
hope;  for  who  hopeth  for  that  which  he  seeth?  " 

Paul. 

"Who  can  really  think  and  not  think  hopefully?" 

George  Meredith. 

"Hope  is  the  real  riches  as  fear  is  the  real  poverty." 

Hume. 

"All  men  hope  and  see  their  hopes  frustrate, 
And  grieve  awhile,  and  hope  anew. " 

Browning. 

"I  have  set  free  thy  prisoners  from  the  pit  wherein  is  no 
water.  Turn  you  to  the  stronghold,  ye  prisoners  of  hope:  Even 
to-day  do  I  declare  that  I  will  render  double  unto  you. " 

Zechariah. 

"Hope  is  that  vigorous  principle,  which  sets  the  head  and 
heart  to  work,  animates  the  man  to  do  his  very  utmost,  puts 
difficulty  out  of  countenance  and  makes  even  impossibility 
give  way. " 

Jeremy  Collier. 

"What  future  bliss,  he  gives  not  thee  to  know, 
But  gives  that  hope  to  be  thy  blessing  now. 
Hope  springs  eternal  in  the  human  breast; 
Man  never  is,  but  always  To  Be  blest.  " 

Pope. 


(36) 


THE  RELIGION  OF  TO-MORROW 
MORNING 

A  prominent  physician  of  New  York  once  introduced 
a  lecture  on  nervous  diseases,  with  the  remark:  "Gentle- 
men, the  world  is  full  of  four  things,  sin  and  sorrow  and 
books  and  neurasthenia."  In  his  opinion,  a  character- 
istic of  the  world  to-day  is  its  sadness.  Watts'  picture, 
"Hope,"  pronounces  the  same  verdict.  The  figure  in  the 
picture  represents  the  soul  of  the  age.  She  is  sitting  on 
the  globe,  having  attained  much  knowledge,  and  made 
many  achievements,  and  yet  she  is  unspeakably  sad. 
The  figure  is  bowed  and  stricken  with  the  burden  and 
pressure  of  life,  straining  to  make  in  the  dim  twilight, 
what  music  she  can  from  the  last  remaining  string  of  her 
lyre. 

The  picture  says  that,  in  spite  of  the  world's  weari- 
ness, something  still  remains.  Watts  calls  this  thing 
Hope.  It  may  be  called  faith,  or  will  to  live,  or  the 
religion  of  to-morrow  morning,  as  Chesterton  calls  it.  It 
is  that  delicate  indestructible  last  refuge  of  the  spirit,  a 
something  that  always  seems  ready  to  disappear,  yet 
abides,  a  string  stretched  to  snapping,  yet  still  holding. 

(37) 


38  "HOPE"— GEORGE  F.  WATTS 

This  trick  or  trait  of  hope  is  represented  in  the  picture. 
It  is  the  hope  which  always  threatens  to  desert  men, 
but  one  string  is  left,  however  empty  and  desolate  may 
be  the  lyre  of  life.  The  fact  that  hope  is  a  universal  hu- 
man grace  is  suggested  in  the  picture  by  placing  the  figure 
of  Hope  on  the  summit  of  the  globe.  All  normal  men  hope. 
If  their  plans  are  frustrated  they  grieve  and  hope  again. 

Ought  not  Watts  to  have  called  his  picture  "De- 
spair" rather  than  "Hope?"  It  seems  so.  In  fact  great 
doubt  or  despair  is  what  the  figure  does  represent,  but 
the  chief  point  to  be  noted  is  that  it  is  a  despair  that  hopes. 
Of  course  this  is  paradoxical;  the  picture  itself  is  a 
paradox.  This  is  its  merit.  It  seems  contradictory  to 
say  that  despair  hopes.  But  what  our  painter  means  to 
say  is  that  hope  is  not  a  virture — does  not  exist  at  all 
indeed,  apart  from  doubt,  despondency,  or  despair.  Only 
in  the  presence  of  this  downcast  attitude  does  hope  reveal 
its  true  meaning  and  acquire  value.  The  function  of  hope 
is  to  create  a  prospective  joy  when  as  yet  no  joy  exists  or 
seems  likely  to  exist.  When  the  joy  is  realized,  hope  for 
it  ceases.  Hope  is  the  evidence  of  things  not  seen.  Mr. 
G.  K.  Chesterton,  with  his  natural  love  of  a  paradox  has 
expressed  in  words  the  same  paradoxical  truths  about 
hope  which  Watts  expressed  on  canvas.  Hope,  he  says, 
means  hoping  when  things  are  hopeless,  or  it  is  no  virtue 
at  all.     Hope  is  the  power  of  being  cheerful  in  circum- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  TO-MORROW  MORNING     39 

stances  which  we  know  to  be  desperate.  The  virtue  of 
hope  exists  only  in  earthquake  or  eclipse.  For  practical 
purposes  it  is  at  the  hopeless  moment  that  we  require 
the  hopeful  man,  and  the  virtue  either  does  not  exist  at 
all  or  begins  to  exist  at  that  moment. 

This,  then,  is  the  truth  which  is  strikingly  embodied 
in  the  picture.  When  every  other  prop  has  broken  down 
hope  remains  to  stay  the  soul.  It  has  been  said  that 
exiles  live  on  hope  because  nothing  else  remains  on  which 
they  can  live. 

In  Pandora's  box,  full  of  the  ills  of  life,  hope  lay  at 
the  bottom.  In  Bunyan's  allegory,  when  Faithful  is 
killed,  Hopeful  becomes  his  successor  and  remains  a 
fellow  pilgrim  of  Christian  to  the  end.  Hosea  says  that 
in  the  valley  of  Achor,  that  is,  in  trouble,  a  door  of  hope 
is  opened.  Watts'  picture,  then,  emphasizes  the  impor- 
tant but  neglected  truth  about  hope,  that  it  forever  nestles 
in  the  human  heart,  and  when  the  future  is  blackest  it 
sheds  its  greatest  light.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  Paul 
says,  "  We  are  saved  by  hope. "  For  this  reason  also,  there 
can  be  no  such  thing  as  a  pessimist.  When  a  man  says 
that  this  is  the  worst  of  all  possible  worlds,  and  that  if  he 
could  have  made  it,  he  would  have  made  it  better,  he  testi- 
fies to  the  high  standard  in  his  own  heart.  The  world 
cannot  be  all  bad,  for  his  own  heart  has  light  and  hope 
in  it. 


40  "HOPE"— GEORGE  F.  WATTS 

The  bandaged  eyes  in  the  picture  mean  much.  The 
hands  of  the  figure  are  free.  Why  does  she  not  pluck 
the  napkin  away?  It  is  because  she  cannot  safely  look 
at  the  only  things  she  can  see  with  her  eyes.  Her  exalted 
position  and  worldly  success  have  not  brought  peace. 
Her  hope  now  lies  in  shutting  her  eyes  to  them  and  looking 
within  her  own  heart,  listening  to  the  still  small  voice  from 
the  one  string  that  is  left: 

"  If   thou   wouldest    taste   each    dear   surprise 
Tear  not  the  bandage  from  thine  eyes 
Within  the  heart  love's  vision  lies." 

This  hope  in  the  heart,  the  picture  says,  is  no  mere 
dream.  There  is  an  answering  reality  outside.  There 
falls  on  the  figure  the  light  of  a  dawn  not  seen.  Its 
source  is  outside  the  picture.  Heaven  responds  to  the 
instinct  in  the  soul.  There  is  one  star  in  the  sky,  a  morn- 
ing star.  Hope's  note  in  the  human  heart  is  answered  by 
hope's  star  in  the  sky.  By  this  the  artist  says  that  man's 
hope  for  a  future  has  some  other  answer  besides  the  de- 
lusive echo  of  his  heart.  Hope  is  no  blind-alley.  Men 
on  the  sea  would  not  have  longings  for  land,  if  no  land 
existed. 

The  man,  then,  who  has  hope  has  a  reality; — one 
of  the  three  great  mystic  virtues  of  Christianity.  The 
man  who  has  it  not  is  dead,  even  though  he  may  seem  to 


THE  RELIGION  OF  TO-MORROW  MORNING     41 

be  alive.  "The  most  fearful  thing  in  life,"  said  Machia- 
velli,  "is  not  poverty  nor  care,  sickness  nor  sorrow  nor 
death,  it  is  its  weariness  of  spirit. "  Weariness  of  spirit  is 
due  to  loss  of  hope.  Hopelessness  is  a  spiritual  disease, 
but  wherever  health  is,  there  is  hope.  The  mood  of 
discouragement  exposes  one  to  the  worst  of  dangers. 
When  the  tone  of  the  physical  system  is  lowered  it  is 
more  vulnerable  to  attack  from  germs  of  disease  which  are 
in  health  easily  repelled  or  thrown  off.  In  like  manner, 
when  hope  declines,  the  door  is  opened  through  which  the 
worst  of  evils  come.  The  practical  message  of  Watts' 
picture  is,  that  there  is  always  a  best  thing  left  to  do,  and 
to  do  that,  is  virtue.  Its  message  is  that  of  Dickens' 
life  motto, — "Don't  stand  and  cry,  but  press  forward 
and  help  relieve  the  difficulty." 


II 

Wise  and  Foolish  Virgins 

From  a  photograph  of  the  original  work  in  marble 
By  Rinaldi 


Ky  Rinaldi 

This  statue  was  made  by  the  Sculptor,  R.  Rinaldi,  in  i86r, 
for  Mr.  Hardy  of  Boston.  The  standing  figure  is  four  feet  six 
inches  high.  It  was  presented  to  Wellesley  College  in  1904,  by 
Mr.  Hardy's  family. 


II 

Interpretation 
Character  not  Transferable 


"If  thou  art  wise,  thou  art  wise  for  thyself.  " 

Proverbs. 

"The  sin   I  impute  to  each  frustrate  ghost 
Is — the  unUt  lamp  and  the  ungirt  loin.  " 

Browning. 

"And  the  foolish  said  unto  the  wise,  Give  us  of  your  oil  for 
our  lamps  are  going  out.  But  the  wise  answered,  saying,  Per- 
adventure  there  will  not  be  enough  for  us  and  you;  go  ye  rather 
to   them  that  sell,   and  buy  for  yourselves. 

Matthew. 

"God  gives  each  man  one  life. 
Like  a   lamp,    then   gives 
That  lamp  due  measure  of  oil. 
Lamp  lighted — hold  high,  wave  wide 
Its  comforts  for  others  to  share! 
Once  quench  it,  what  help  is  left?" 

Browning. 

"Late,   late,   so   late!  and   dark  the  night  and   chill. 
Late,  late,  so  late!  but  we  can  enter  still. 
Too  late,  too  late!  ye  cannot  enter  now. 

No  light  had  we:  for  that  we  do  repent; 
And  learning  this  the  bridegroom  will  relent. 
Too  late!  too  late!  ye  cannot  enter  now. 

No  light;  so  late!  and  dark  and  chill  the  night! 
O  let  us  in  that  we  may  find  the  light! 
Too  late,  too  late!  ye  cannot  enter  now. 

Have  we  not  heard  the  bridegroom  is  so  sweet? 
O  let  us  in,  tho '  late,  to  kiss  his  feet! 
No,  no,  too  late!  ye  cannot  enter  now." 

Tennyson. 


(48) 


CHARACTER  NOT  TRANSFERABLE 

Rinaldi,  in  his  statue,  represents  to  the  eye  the  idea 
which  Christ  embodied  in  the  story  of  the  wise  and  fooHsh 
virgins.  Jesus,  in  his  dramatic  story  of  an  Eastern 
wedding,  with  its  sudden  midnight  cry,  its  sense  of  sur- 
prise, its  shut  door  of  opportunity,  pointed  out  the  indis- 
pensable importance  of  preparing  for  all  moral  crises. 
It  is  the  moment  of  such  a  moral  crisis  that  Rinaldi  has 
represented  in  his  statue.  It  is  "the  moment,  one  and 
infinite;  the  tick  of  one's  lifetime,"  as  Browning  calls  it. 

Such  moments  are  big  with  consequences.  Failure 
to  measure  up  to  emergencies  shuts  doors  that  sometimes 
cannot  be  opened  again.  The  power  of  critical  moments 
to  settle  destinies  has  been  a  favorite  theme  with  the 
moralist  and  the  student  of  human  life.  When  Julius 
Caesar,  the  proconsul  of  Gaul,  crossed  the  little  bridge 
of  the  Rubicon  that  was  forbidden  him  by  law,  his  eye 
was  fixed  on  Rome,  and  he  was  too  accustomed  to  victory 
to  be  careful  of  consequences.  As  men  have  read  this 
turning  point  of  his  history  they  have  put  words  upon  his 
lips,  "The  enemy  awaits  me,  the  opportunity  invites, 
the  die  is  cast."     Men  have  attributed  these  words  to 

4  (49) 


50       "WISE  AND  FOOLISH  VIRGINS"— RINALDI 

him  because  they  felt  how  his  own  and  his  country's 
destiny  hung  upon  that  one  event.  Lord  Tennyson 
rightly  grasped  the  point  of  Christ's  story  of  the  virgins 
when  he  applied  it  to  Queen  Guinevere  in  her  effort  to 
reopen  a  shut  door, 

"  Have  we  not  heard  the  bridegroom  is  so  sweet? 
O  let  us  in,  tho'  late,  to  kiss  his  feet! 
No,  no,  too  late,  ye  cannot  enter  now." 

Some  things  are  done  in  critical  hours  that  cannot  be 
undone,  and  other  things  are  left  undone  that  cannot  be 
done.     This  is  a  tragic  fact  of  life,  apparent  to  all. 

What  is  not  so  apparent  is  why  it  should  be  so. 
Why  should  a  man's  future  and  his  happiness  be  decided 
by  the  action  of  a  single  critical  hour?  It  does  not  seem 
just.  When  a  well-known  New  England  essayist  noticed 
in  Rinaldi's  group  the  pathetic  entreaty  of  the  foolish 
virgin  and  the  uplifted  hand  as  if  to  guard  her  treasure, 
and  the  look  of  deep  sadness  as  the  wise  virgin  refuses 
her  sister's  request,  he  expressed  a  not  uncommon  feeling, 
saying,  "She  should  have  given  her  the  oil."  The  essay- 
ist would  not  have  made  this  remark  had  he  seen  that  in. 
both  the  story  and  the  statue,  the  subject  is  character; 
and  that  their  essential  message  is  that  character  is  not 
transferable.  You  may  give  a  man  money  or  material 
aid  in  his  hour  of  need,  although  whether  you  ought  to  do 


CHARACTER  NOT  TRANSFERABLE  51 

so  is  often  doubtful,  but  to  give  him  character  is  not 
possible,  however  much  you  may  desire  to  do  it,  or 
however  much  you  sympathize  with  his  distress,  as  the 
essayist  sympathized  with  the  foolish  virgin.  Sympathy 
cannot  change  the  facts  of  life,  but  can  change  only  our 
feeling  towards  them.  A  man  cannot  put  on  character 
as  he  would  put  on  a  suit  of  clothes  which  he  orders  from 
his  tailor  in  an  emergency.  It  is  strictly  a  personal 
achievement  and  it  cannot  be  acquired  in  a  moment. 
The  foolish  virgins  asked  to  have  the  results  of  experience 
given  them  when  they  had  not  served  the  necessary 
apprenticeship.  1 1  was  a  request  that  from  its  very  nature 
could  not  be  granted.  It  was  a  request  that  two  and 
two  may  not  make  four. 

The  critical  hour  may  seem  harsh  in  its  dealing  with 
men,  but  it  is  never  unjust.  It  never  makes  nor  unmakes 
any  man;  it  is  simply  an  hour  of  revelation,  revealing 
what  the  man  has  been  making  himself  during  his  previous 
years.  Wellington  understood  this  when  he  said  that  the 
Battle  of  Waterloo  was  won  on  the  cricket  field  at  Eton. 
It  is  an  inescapable  spiritual  law  that  the  unworthy  are 
by  their  own  act  excluded  from  the  highest  achievements 
when  life's  greatest  moments  come.  Herein  consisted 
,  the  foolish  virgin's  folly,  for  "Man's  whole  life  and  training 
is  just  to  fit  him  to  do  the  right  thing  at  the  critical 
moment.    He  who  fails  at  this  juncture  fails  not  because 


52        "WISE  AND  FOOLISH  VIRGINS"— RINALDI 

he,  by  mere  accident,  took  the  wrong  path,  or  made  a  bad 
guess,  or  lost  his  stake;  he  fails  because  he  has  not  so 
ordered  his  previous  life  that  he  might  instinctively  do 
the  right  thing  at  a  push."  Preparedness  is  the  crux  of 
the  question. 

It  was  generally  supposed  that  Daniel  Webster's 
reply  to  Hayne,  which  is  the  high-water  mark  of  American 
eloquence,  was  the  product  of  the  emergency.  But 
Webster  has  left  it  on  record  that  it  was  entirely  prepared 
long  before.  When  he  was  called  on  by  his  alarmed  fellow- 
New  Englanders  to  meet  the  Carolinian's  attack,  he  said 
all  he  had  to  do  was  "to  turn  to  his  notes  tucked 
away  in  a  pigeonhole.  If  Hayne  had  tried  to  make  a 
speech  to  fit  my  notes,  he  could  not  have  hit  them  better. 
No  man  is  inspired  by  the  occasion,  I  never  was."  As 
in  every  other  emergency,  so  in  moral  emergencies,  the 
real  critical  hour  is  not  the  hour  of  the  emergency,  but 
it  is  the  unobserved  preceding  hour,  for  it  silently  and 
imperceptibly  builds  up  the  character  whose  strength 
or  weakness  the  emergency  will  reveal.  What  Christ's 
story  so  forcibly  teaches  and  Rinaldi's  touching  rendering 
of  it  illustrates,  is  the  truth  that  there  are  no  short  cuts 
to  the  attainment  of  character;  that  character  is  not  a 
dower  but  an  achievement,  and  being  a  personal  achieve- 
ment, is  not  transferable,  and  that  if  a  critical  hour 
discovers  to  a  man  that  he  has  an  "ungirt  loin  and  an 


CHARACTER  NOT  TRANSFERABLE  53 

unlit  lamp,"  it  is  only  revealing  the  results  of  his  previous 
life  and  conduct. 

"Therefore,  in  life's  small  things  be  resolute  and  great 
To  keep  thy  muscle  trained;  Knowest  thou  when  Fate 
Thy  measure  takes,  or  when  she'll  say  to  thee, 
'I  fmd  thee  worthy;  do  this  deed  for  me?'  " 


Ill 

Sir  Galahad 

From  a  painting  by  George  F.  Watts 


SIR  GALAHAD 

By   George  F.  Watts 

This  is  doubtless  the  most  popular  of  all  the  pictures  painted 
hy  Watts.  It  is  the  representation  of  Sir  Galahad,  the  Knight 
of  King  Arthur's  Round  Table,  and  was  suggested  by  Tennyson's 
sketch  of  him,  the  spirit  of  which  is  almost  perfectly  embodied 
in  the  picture.  There  are  two  versions  of  the  original.  The 
earlier  one  was  given  by  the  artist  to  Eton  College,  where  it  now 
hangs  in  the  beautiful  chapel,  a  most  appropriate  home  for  it ; 
the  other  is  owned  by  Alexander  Henderson,  Esq.,  London. 


Ill 

Interpretation 
The  Eyes  of  the  Heart 


"Only  the  good  discern  the  good. " 

Mrs.  Browning. 

"Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall  see  God.  " 

Jesus. 

"Godliness  is  profitable — unto  the  life  that  now  is." 

Paul. 

"The  holier  a  man  is  the  more  perfectly  does  he  understand 
Sin;  the  more  wicked  he  is  the  less.  " 

Fairbairn. 

"My  good  blade  carves  the  casques  of  men, 
My  tough  lance  thrusteth  sure, 
My  strength  is  as  the  strength  of  ten 
Because  my  heart  is  pure. " 

Tennyson, 

"And  one  there  was  among  us,  ever  moved 
Among  us  in  white  armor,  Galahad. 
'God  made  thee  good  as  thou  art  beautiful, ' 

Said  Arthur,  when  he  dubbed  him  Klnight;  and  none. 
In  so  young  youth,  was  ever  made  a  Knight 
Till  Galahad. " 

Tennyson. 

''Neither  is  a  horse  elated  nor  proud  of  his  manger  and 
trappings  and  coverings,  nor  a  bird  of  his  little  shreds  of  cloth 
or  his  nest;  but  both  of  them  are  proud  of  their  swiftness;  one 
proud  of  the  swiftness  of  the  feet  and  the  other  of  the  wings. 
Do  you  also,  then,  not  be  greatly  proud  of  your  food  and  dress, 
and,  in  short,  of  any  external  things,  but  be  proud  of  your 
integrity  and  good  deeds.  " 

Epictetus. 


(60) 


THE  EYES  OF  THE   HEART 

In  Walter  Pater's  "Marius,  the  Epicurean,"  an 
Italian  mother  tells  her  son  that  his  soul  is  like  a  white 
bird,  which  he  must  carry  in  his  bosom  across  a  crowded 
public  place.  Would  it  reach  the  opposite  side  unruffled 
and  unsoiled  ?  The  question  of  this  anxious  Italian 
mother  is  typical  of  all  thoughtful  mothers.  The  task 
which  such  mothers  set  for  their  sons,  the  task  of  keeping 
their  souls  undishonored,  is  the  most  difficult  achieve- 
ment in  life.  If  the  pathway  to  it  is  long  and  steep,  it 
is  the  pathway  that  leads  to  sovereign  power.  It  is  the 
universal  law  that  things  most  worth  while  are  always 
the  most  difficult.  The  youthful  Sir  Galahad,  of  the  old 
legend,  stands  as  the  representative  of  the  class,  larger 
than  is  sometimes  supposed,  of  those  who  succeed  in  the 
attempt.  The  story  of  his  achievement  and  its  results  is 
told  in  Tennyson's  poem  and  embodied  in  Watts'  picture 
of  the  spotless  Knight  of  the  Arthurian  epic. 

As  the  Knights  of  the  Round  Table  provided  a  center 
for  mediaeval  chivalry,  so  the  Sangrael,  or  royal  blood,  the 
Holy  Grail,  "the  cup  from  which  our  Lord  drank  at  the 
last    sad    supper   with    His    own,"    provided   medieval 

(6i) 


62  "SIR  GALAHAD"— GEORGE  F.  WATTS 

Religion  with  a  center  for  its  aspirations.  In  the  legends 
of  Parsifal  and  Lohengrin  and  Arthur,  the  elements  of 
knightly  heroism  and  religious  aspirations  are  wedded 
together.  Tennyson  has  made  the  legend  of  Arthur  live 
again  in  his  "Idyls  of  the  King."  The  Knights  of  King 
Arthur  go  in  search  of  the  Grail.  The  mystic  symbol  is 
such  that  at  the  same  time  and  place  it  could  be  seen  by 
some  and  not  by  others.  To  some  it  seemed  veiled  with  a 
luminous  cloud.  The  Knights  had  a  vision  of  it  mani- 
fested in  proportion  to  their  purity.  One  Knight  alone, 
Sir  Galahad,  the  Knight  of  virgin  heart  and  will,  the 
Knight  who  knew  no  fear,  he  alone  saw  the  Grail,  clear 
and  distinct. 

The  moment  represented  in  Watts'  picture  of  him  is 
the  moment  when  the  heavenly  vision  of  the  Grail  is 
revealed  to  him  in  the  luminous  sky  through  a  break  in 
the  trees.  He  dismounts  from  his  white  horse  and  stands 
fascinated  with  the  vision  which  lights  up  his  face  and 
armor. 

Both  the  legend  and  the  picture  seek  to  represent  the 
truth  that  purity  of  heart  gives  men  power  to  see  things 
which  men  without  it  cannot  see.  They  seek  to  give 
concrete  form  to  the  statement  of  Jesus  that  the  pure  in 
heart  are  blessed,  for  they  shall  enjoy  the  vision  of  higher 
things,  especially  of  God,  denied  to  those  who  indulge 
their  imagination  in  sensuous  images.     Galahad's  purity 


THE  EYES  OF  THE  HEART  63 

put  what  Paul  calls,  "eyes  in  his  heart,"  gave  him  the 
faculty  of  faith  or  imagination,  by  means  of  which  he 
could  see  what  no  physical  eyes  ever  see.  One  of  Arthur's 
Knights  confessed  the  truth  of  this  when  he  said — 

"Then  every  evil  word  I  had  spoken  once. 
And  every  evil  thought  I  had  thought  of  old. 
And  every  evil  deed  1  ever  did 
Awoke  and  cried.  This  quest  is  not  for  thee,'  " 

It  is  only  Galahad  who  can  say  to  the  King — 

"  I  saw  the  Holy  Grail  and  heard  a  cry — 
O  Galahad  and  O  Galahad  follow  me! 
'Ah,  Galahad,  Galahad,'  said  the  King,  for  such 
As  thou  art  is  the  vision,  not  for  these.  '" 

The  passionate  desire,  the  "cry  of  the  human"  to  approach 
and  mingle  with  the  divine,  common  to  all  religions,  can  be 
satisfied  only  in  proportion  to  purity  of  heart.  Plato 
gives  a  practical  application  to  the  power  of  vision  which 
purity  gives.  In  speaking  of  what  constitutes  a  good 
juryman,  he  said  that  to  be  qualified  to  administer  sound 
justice,  he  must  be  free  from  the  taint  of  evil  habits, 
and  must  have  "been  pure-minded  from  his  early  youth. 
In  order  to  deal  with  evil,  he  must  be  guided  by  knowledge 
of  it,  not  by  personal  experience.  "Your  smart  and 
suspicious  jurymen,"  says  Plato,  "who  himself  has  been 


64-  "SIR  GALAHAD"— GEORGE  F.  WATTS 

guilty  of  crimes,  fancies  himself  knowing  and  clever,  but 
when  he  comes  to  deal  with  men  of  years  and  virtue,  he 
shows  himself  to  be  no  better  than  a  fool,  with  his  mis- 
timed suspicions  and  his  ignorance  of  a  healthy  character, 
due  to  his  not  possessing  any  example  of  such  a  phenom- 
enon." Then  Plato  states  the  general  principle  that 
vice  can  never  know  both  itself  and  virtue,  but  virtue  in 
time  acquires  a  knowledge  at  once  of  itself  and  of  vice. 
Is  not  Plato  right?  It  is  surprising  how  the  pernicious 
fallacy  persists  that  an  experience  of  evil  gives  a  man  a 
truer  knowledge  of  life.  Impurity  of  heart  destroys  the 
capacity  for  any  true  knowledge.  Darkness  can  know 
only  itself,  and  that  only  in  part;  but  light  knows  itself 
and  also  its  opposite,  darkness.  It  is  the  Galahads  who 
see,  not  only  the  highest  in  life,  but  the  whole  of  life. 
In  Watts'  picture  a  sword  hangs  by  Galahad's  side 
to  indicate  that  he  is  not  a  mere  dreamer,  but  a  stalwart 
fighter.  Purity  gives,  not  only  power  of  vision,  but 
power  of  achievement.  Goodness  is  essentially  strong, 
evil  is  essentially  weak.  Galahad's  purity  gave  him  the 
strength  of  ten.  The  vision  of  the  Grail  gave  him  power 
to  perform. 

"And  in  the  strength  of  this  I  rode; 
Shattering  all  evil  customs  everywhere, 
And  in  the  strength  of  this,  came  Victor." 


THE  EYES  OF  THE  HEART  65 

They  called  Parsifal  "  the  guileless  fool, "  but  he  it  was  who 
wrought  the  salvation  of  Wagner's  drama. 

It  is  not  without  significance  that  the  only  Knight 
of  Arthur's  court  who  saw  the  Holy  Grail  was  the  youngest 
knight  of  the  Round  Table.  The  strength  of  youth  lies 
in  the  purity  of  its  ideals  and  the  warmth  of  its  enthusiasm. 
And  it  is  a  fact  of  history  that  it  is  not  to  the  cautious, 
calculating  men  of  experience,  who  have  exchanged  their 
ideals  for  their  comfort,  but  to  the  vision-seeing  chivalrous 
youth,  that  the  great  causes  of  God  owe  their  greatest 
debt. 

There  is  a  kind  of  energy  which  scientists  call 
"energy  of  position."  It  is  locked-up  motion  in  an 
elevated  body.  A  pile-driving  machine  illustrates  it. 
The  ram  is  slowly  elevated  to  the  top  of  the  machine. 
When  it  is  freed  by  the  releasing  hook,  it  falls  with  accu- 
mulated force  on  the  pile-head.  The  stored-up  energy 
of  position  is  converted  into  energy  of  motion.  Like- 
wise moral  elevation  gives  practical  efficiency.  Moral 
feebleness  destroys  it.  Tennyson  was  true  to  life  when 
he  made  Galahad  to  be  the  most  effective  w^arrior  of  all 
the  Knights.  During  the  riot  in  Paris  in  1848,  a  mob 
swept  down  a  street  blazing  wuth  cannon,  killed  the 
soldiers,  and  spiked  the  guns.  A  few  blocks  beyond  it  was 
stopped  by  an  old  white-haired  man,  who  uncovered  and 
signaled  for  silence.     Then  the  leader  of  the  mob  said, 


66  "SIR  GALAHAD"— GEORGE  F.  WATTS 

"Citizens,  it  is  De  La  Eure.  Sixty  years  of  pure  life  is 
about  to  address  you!"  Purity  of  character  is  a  more 
effective  force  than  cannon.  If  men  are  to  be  effective  as 
Galahad  was,  they  must,  like  him,  wear  "the  white 
flower  of  a  blameless  life."  When  Ulysses  went  to 
Circe's  isle,  he  accomplished  what  none  of  his  companions 
were  able  to  do,  because  Hermes  gave  him  for  protection 
the  little  flower  "moly. "  The  flower's  real  name  and 
meaning  was  "Shield-Heart,  White  Integrity." 

"Traveller,  pluck  a  stem  of  moly, 
If  thou  chance  at  Circe's  isle, — 
Hermes'  moly,  growing  solely 
To  undo  enchanter's  wile." 


The  Ruins 

From  a  painting  by  James  Tissot 


THE  RUINS 

Bv  Tames  Tissot 


This  picture  was  exmouea,  in  England  and  America,  with 
Mr,  Tissot's  pictures  on  the  "Life  of  Christ,"  for  reasons  which 
appear  in  the  interpretation.  After  Mr.  Tissot's  death  in  1903, 
it  was  sold  at  public  sale,  in  Paris,  by  the  Executors  of  the  Tissot 
Estate.     The  size  of  the  picture  is  sir  by  nine  feet. 


IV 

Interpretation 
The  Measure  of  Sympathy 


* '  I  sat  where  they  sat.  " 

EZEKIEL. 

"Who  can  bear  gently  with  the  ignorant  and  erring,  for 
that  he  himself  also  is  compassed  with  infirmity.  " 

Book  of  Hebrews. 

"If  you  tell  me  a  sad  story  about  the  fairies,  I  shall  probably 
shed  no  tears.  The  reason  of  the  dry  eyes  will  not  be  that  the 
story  is  untrue:  we  shed  most  tears  over  untrue  stories.  The 
cause  will  lie  in  the  fact  that  Fairyland  is  foreign  land,  that 
the  wants  supposed  to  be  there  experienced  are  not  the  wants 
felt  by  me. " 

George  Matheson. 

"He  prayeth  best  who  leaves  unguessed 
The  mystery  of  another's  breast. 
Why  cheeks  are  pale,  why  eyes  o'erflow, 
Or  heads  are  white,  thou  needst  not  know. 
Enough  to  note  by  many  a  sign 
That  every  heart  hath  needs  like  thine. " 

Whittier. 

"Then   gently  scan   your  brother  man, 

Still  gentler  sister  woman; 
Tho '  they  may  gang  a  kennin  wrang, 

To  step  aside  is  human : 
One  point   must   still  be   greatly   dark, 

The  moving  why  they  do  it; 
And  just  as  lamely  can  ye  mark 

How  far  perhaps  they  rue  it. 

Who  made  the  heart,  'tis  He  alone 

Decidedly  can  try  us; 
He  knows  each  chord,  its  various  tone, 

Each  spring,  its  various  bias: 
Then  at  the  balance  let's  be  mute, 

We  never  can  adjust  it; 
What's  done  we  partly  may  compute, 

But  know  not  what's  resisted. " 

Burns.  \ 

(72)  I 

I 


THE  MEASURE  OF  SYxMPATHY 

James  Tissot  was  fifty  years  old,  when  the  unex- 
pected happened,  which  changed  the  entire  nature  of  his 
future  artistic  work.  Before  the  change  came  he  was 
recognized  as  a  master  hand,  but  the  subjects  of  his  art 
were  commonplace;  their  spirit  was  worldly.  Suddenly 
he  began  to  paint  pictures  which  had  to  do  only  with  the 
life  of  Christ,  pictures  which  have  made  his  name  a 
household  word  in  religious  circles. 

What  wrought  the  change  in  his  life  and  work  was  the 
experience,  whose  story  is  embodied  in  his  picture,  "The 
Ruins."  He  was  engaged  in  painting  a  series  of  fifteen 
pictures  to  represent  the  society  pursuits  of  the  women 
of  gay  Paris.  While  painting  one  of  this  series,  called 
"The  Choir  Singer,"  he  went  to  church  one  day,  not  to 
worship,  but  to  catch  the  atmosphere  for  his  picture. 
He  found  himself  joining  in  the  devotions,  and  as  he  bowed 
his  head  and  closed  his  eyes  he  saw  a  strange  and  thrilling 
picture.  It  seemed  that  he  was  looking  at  the  ruins  of  a 
modern  castle.  The  windows  were  broken,  the  cornices 
and  drains  lay  shattered  on  the  ground.  Then  a  peasant 
and  his  wife  picked  their  way  over  the  littered  ground. 

(73) 


74  "THE  RUINS"— JAMES  TISSOT 

Wearily  he  threw  down  the  bundle  that  contained  their 
all,  and  the  woman  seated  herself  on  a  broken  pillar. 
Her  husband,  too,  sat  down,  but  in  pity  for  her  sorrow, 
strove  to  sit  upright,  to  play  the  man  even  in  misfortune. 
Then  there  came  a  strange  figure  gliding  towards  these 
human  ruins.  Its  feet  and  hands  were  pierced  and 
bleeding,  its  head  wreathed  in  thorns,  while  from  its 
shoulders  hung  an  oriental  cloak,  inscribed  with  the 
scenes,  "The  Fall  of  Man  and  The  Kiss  of  Judas."  This 
figure,  needing  no  name,  seated  itself  by  the  man  and 
leaned  its  head  upon  his  shoulder,  seeming  to  say, 
"See,  I  have  been  more  miserable  than  you.  I  am  the 
solution  of  all  your  problems;  without  me,  civilization  is  a 
ruin."  Tissot  said  the  vision  insistently  pursued  him  for 
weeks,  and  when  he  could  not  fight  it  off,  he  painted  it. 

This  vision  and  the  picture  of  it  marked  the  parting 
of  the  ways  for  the  artist.  The  next  ten  years  were  spent 
in  Palestine,  and  from  this  period  came  three  hundred- 
sixty-five  paintings,  and  one  hundred  fifty  pen-and-ink 
sketches.  They  cover  almost  every  incident  in  the  life 
of  Jesus,  preserving,  with  fidelity,  the  oriental  atmosphere 
and  constituting  a  vivid  commentary  on  the  Gospel 
record. 

"The  Ruins,"  taken  by  itself,  apart  from  the  place 
it  holds  in  the  artist's  life,  tells  the  secret  of  true  human 
sympathy.     Sympathy   is    usually    thought    to    be    a 


THE  MEASURE  OF  SYMPATHY  75 

feeling  of  tenderness  and  pity  for  others,  whereas  in  its 
essence  it  is  an  act  of  will  or  imagination,  by  which  we  sit 
where  others  sit  and  enter  into  their  condition.  Up  to  a 
certain  point  sympathy  is  a  memory.  I  feel  for  you  what 
at  one  time  1  felt  for  myself.  The  remembrance  of  my 
own  grief  is  the  point  of  contact  between  me  and  you. 
But  into  those  sorrows  of  others  which  I  have  not  known, 
I  can  enter  only  by  an  act  of  will,  and  whether  it  be  an 
act  of  memory  or  imagination,  or  both,  the  true  measure 
of  my  sympathy  is  the  degree  to  which  I  am  able  in 
imagination,  to  sit  beside  you  and  share  your  experience. 
When  Ezekiel  went  to  the  captives  by  the  river 
Chebar,  he  was  silent  and  overwhelmed  for  days.  He 
says,  "I  sat  where  they  sat. "  He  entered  by  sympathetic 
appreciation  into  their  lives  and  looked  at  them  from  their 
point  of  view.  He  has  expressed  the  problems  and 
aspirations  of  the  exiles,  as  no  other  prophet  has  done, 
and  he  could  do  so  because  he  sat  where  they  sat.  Eze- 
kiel understood  the  life  of  the  Hebrew  exile  for  the  same 
reason  that  Kipling  understood  the  life  of  the  English 
exile  in  India.  The  reason  Kipling  states  in  his  own 
words, 

"I  have  eaten  your  bread  and  salt, 
I  have  drunk  your  water  and  wine. 
The  deaths  ye  died  I  have  watched  beside. 
And  the  lives  that  ye  led  were  mine." 


76  "THE  RUINS"— JAMES  TISSOT 

Tissot's  picture  represents  this  fundamental  fact  of 
Christ's  life,  His  ability  to  put  Himself  into  another  man's 
place.  He  achieved  that  for  which  George  Fox  prayed. 
"  I  have  prayed  to  be  baptised  into  a  sense  of  all  conditions 
that  I  might  be  able  to  know  the  needs  and  feel  the  sorrows 
of  all."  Such  power  is  rare;  men  like  Dante  and  Shake- 
speare have  the  power  of  penetrating  to  the  secrets  of  the 
human  heart  and  seem  to  have  expressed  every  emotion 
and  aspiration  of  which  the  heart  is  capable.  But  most 
men,  in  their  view  of  others,  are  limited  by  their  own 
experience  and  look  out  from  their  own  little  chinks. 

Gallaudet,  the  well-known  instructor  of  deaf  mutes, 
tells  a  pathetic  story  of  one  of  his  favorite  pupils,  a  little 
boy.  He  asked  the  boy  whether  he  knew  the  story  of 
Washington  and  the  cherry  tree.  With  his  nimble  fingers 
the  boy  began  to  repeat  it.  When  he  came  to  the  point  in 
the  story  when  George's  father  discovered  the  tree  and 
asked  him  who  had  hacked  it,  the  boy  said,  "George  put 
his  hatchet  in  his  left  hand  and,"  "  Stop, "  said  the  teacher, 
"how  do  you  know  he  put  his  hatchet  in  his  left  hand  ?" 
"because,"  answered  the  boy,  "he  needed  his  right  hand 
to  tell  his  father  he  cut  the  tree."  The  boy  made  his 
own  experience  his  basis  of  judgment. 

There  can  be  no  true  judgment  of  others,  or  sym- 
pathy with  them  until  we  can  take  their  point  of  view 
instead  of  our  own.  Such  power  usually  comes  only  after 


THE  MEASURE  OF  SYMPATHY  77 

a  long  experience  of  life.  For  this  reason  no  man  in 
England  is  allowed  to  sit  as  a  judge  in  a  criminal  court 
until  he  is  fifty  years  old.  Our  lack  of  sympathy  is  largely 
due  to  our  inability  to  see  another's  life  from  his  point 
of  view. 

Our  failure  to  follow  the  Golden  Rule  comes  less  from 
lack  of  good  intention  than  from  inabilty  to  put  ourselves, 
in  imagination,  into  the  place  of  others.  In  Hugo's 
"Les  Miserables,"  the  Bishop's  sympathy  was  a  real 
factor  in  the  convict's  life,  because  he  had  this  power. 
He  expressed  the  habit  of  his  life  when  the  convict  stood 
hesitatingly  at  his  door.  "This  house  is  not  my  house," 
he  said,  "it  is  the  house  of  Jesus  Christ.  This  door  does 
not  demand  of  him  who  enters  it  whether  he  has  a  name, 
but  whether  he  has  a  grief." 


The  Magdalene 

From  a  painting  by  Guercino 


THE   MAGDALENE 

By  Guercinn 

Giovanni  Francesco  Barbieri,  »..yiiiiw.,i.,v  ivwuwu  as  Guercino 
painted  two  pictures  of  Mary  Magdalene,  with  the  same  motive. 
One  is  in  Rome.  The  other,  reproduced  here,  is  in  the  National 
Museum  at  Naples.  The  reproducti'>"  -  *" —  f,  photograph 
by  Alinari,  Florence,  Italy. 


Interpretation 
Deliverance  Through  Love 


"Though  ye  have  lain  among  the  pots,  yet  ye  shall  be  as 
the  wings  of  a  dove,  covered  with  silver  and  her  feathers  with 
yellow  gold.  " 

Psalms. 

"And  if  at  times  an  evil  strain, 
To  lawless  love  appealing, 
Broke  in  upon  the  sweet  refrain 
Of  Pure  and  healthful  feeling, 


But  think,  while  falls  that  shade  between 

The  erring  one  and  Heaven, 
That  he  who  loved  like  Magdalen 

Like  her,  may  be  forgiven.  " 

Whittier. 

"Can  peach  renew  lost  bloom? 
Or  violet  lost  perfume? 

Or  sulUed  snow  turn  white,  as  over  night? 
Man  cannot  compass  it;  yet  never  fear 
The  leper  Naaman 
Shows  what  God  will  and  can ; 
God,  who  worked  there,  is  working  here.  " 

Christina  Rossetti. 


"According  to  'the  master  of  them  that  know, '  the  aim  of 
tragedy  is  to  refine  the  affections  through  pity  and  terror;  but 
if  there  be  any  one  lesson  which,  above  all  others,  is  taught  by 
the  Inferno  and  Purgatorio,  it  is  that  the  sight  of  the  eternal 
tragedy  of  Hell  and  the  contemplation  of  the  sufferings  which 
follow  sin,  are  weaker  far  than  the  power  of  love  to  quicken 
and  refine  the  soul.  " 

W,  J,  Payling  Wright, 


(84) 


DELIVERANCE  THROUGH  LOVE 

Almost  no  other  heroine  of  the  Bible  has  been  so 
often  represented  by  artists  as  Mary  of  Magdala.  That 
this  is  so  is  not  strange.  For  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
and  pathetic  chapters  in  Christ's  life  is  the  story  of  His 
relation  to  Mary  Magdalene.  She  followed  Him  from 
Magdala,  through  Galilee,  Samaria,  and  Judea,  to  Jeru- 
salem. She  was  the  last  at  the  cross,  the  first  at  the  grave. 
When  she  brought  spices  to  the  grave  on  Sunday  morning 
to  perform  her  task  of  reverential  love  to  the  Master's 
body,  and  when  she  was  robbed  of  this  task,  her  wild 
grief  deprived  her  of  the  power  to  recognize  His  voice  or 
form.  Of  the  action  of  the  two  Marys  at  the  cross,  it  has 
been  said  that  the  Magdalene's  grief  is  the  wild  grief  of  a 
lover;  the  other  Mary's  is  the  unselfish  love  of  a  mother 
who  has  others  to  care  for.  If  the  Magdalene's  strange 
love  for  Jesus  had  in  it  something  of  selfishness,  in  some 
respects  it  was  a  love  deeper  than  anyone  else  had. 

The  place  she  occupies  in  Christian  thought  is  not 
due,  however,  to  her  strange  deep  love  for  Jesus,  but 
is  due  to  what  was  wrought  in  her  by  Christ's  love  for  her. 
It  was  Christ's  love  for  her,  which  delivered  her  from  her 

(S5) 


86.  "THE  MAGDALENE"— GUERCINO 

past,  and  made  her  what  she  became.  This  is  the  center 
of  interest  in  the  Magdalene's  life.  This  central  fact 
Guercino,  with  the  true  instinct  of  the  artist,  has  seized 
and  portrayed.  In  the  picture  two  symbols  are  so  used 
as  to  express  one  idea.  Mary  in  her  own  person  is  made 
by  the  artist  to  symbolize  her  past  life.  The  crown  of 
thorns  is  the  symbol  of  the  love  through  which  she  was 
delivered.  Her  deliverance  through  the  love  of  Him  who 
wore  the  crown  of  thorns  is  the  thought  at  which  she  is 
weeping  as  she  now  looks  at  it.  The  picture  thus  repre- 
sents the  central  truth  for  which  Mary's  life  has  come  to 
stand,  that  it  is  possible  to  be  delivered,  through  love,  from 
the  lowest  depths  to  the  shining  heights  where  dwelleth 
God;  that  there  is  a  method  by  which  soot  can  be  washed 
from  the  soul's  wings  and  they  be  made  white.  There  is 
a  Roman  Catholic  tradition  which  says  that  Mary 
Magdalene  and  Mary  of  Bethany  were  the  same  person. 
Whether  this  tradition  is  founded  on  fact  or  not,  it  is 
founded  on  the  truth  that  any  Mary  Magdalene  can  become 
a  Mary  of  Bethany,  and  that  there  is  no  stage  of  human 
sin,  on  which,  if  one  gets,  one  is  compelled  to  remain. 

The  Magdalene  is  an  outstanding  illustration  of  the 
great  fact  of  human  experience,  that  "To  whom  much 
is  forgiven,  the  same  loveth  much. "  What  she  was  deliv- 
ered from,  regulated  her  love  for  Christ.  Her  experience 
is  universally  true.     Mark  Rutherford  says  that,  "If  a 


DELIVERANCE  THROUGH  LOVE  87 

man  wants  to  know  what  the  potency  of  love  is,  he  must 
be  a  menial,  he  must  be  despised.  In  the  love  of  a  woman 
to  a  man  who  is  of  no  account,  God  has  provided  us  with 
a  true  testimony  of  what  is  in  His  own  heart.  I  cannot 
write  poetry,  but  if  I  could,  no  theme  would  tempt  me 
like  that  of  love  to  such  a  person  as  I  was — not  love  to  the 
hero,  but  love  to  the  Helot.  When  I  have  thought  about 
it,  I  have  felt  my  poor  heart  swell  with  a  kind  of  incon- 
trollable  fervor." — Such  Mary  felt  Christ's  love  for  her  to 
be,  and  this  is  the  open  secret  of  her  love.  Men's  response 
to  divine  love  is  proportioned  to  their  feeling  of  unworthi- 
ness,  and  it  is  a  fact  of  history,  that  the  philosophy  which 
has  treated  sin  lightly,  has  also  failed  to  exalt  Christ. 

Deliverance  through  love  is  one  of  these  religious 
principles  which,  like  many  others,  has  been  expressed 
in  terms  of  human  experience  by  modern  novelists.  It  is 
strikingly  illustrated  in  Winston  Churchill's  "Coniston." 
Jethro  Bass  is  delivered  from  his  unscrupulous  life  and 
political  machinations,  not  by  his  love  for  his  adopted 
daughter  Cynthia,  great  as  that  was,  but  by  her  love  for 
him.  Her  pure  love  had  idealized  him,  and  it  was  not 
destroyed  by  her  discovery  of  his  flagrant  sin.  What 
redeemed  him  was  the  thought  that  she,  being  what  she 
was,  could  love  him,  being  the  kind  of  man  he  was.  His 
discovery  that  her  idealizing  love  could  not  be  destroyed 
by  sin,  was  the  power  which  made  him  forsake  his  low 


88  "THE  MAGDALENE"— GUERCINO 

principles  and  take  his  stand  along  side  of  her,  who  became 
his  savior.  The  same  great  principle  is  powerfully 
portrayed  in  Mary  Johnston's  "Lewis  Rand."  Deliver- 
ance at  the  last  is  wrought  for  Lewis  Rand,  through  the 
idealizing  and  heroic  love  of  his  wife,  Jacqueline. 

The  Magdalene  will  always  remain  a  prominent 
illustration  of  the  creative  power  of  love.  It  is  a  creative 
power  because  it  leads  the  loved  one  to  look  upon  himself 
as  the  loving  one  looks  upon  him.  Love  idealizes  its 
object.  That  is  what  love  is  for.  By  so  doing  it  creates 
the  hope  and  inspires  the  effort  in  the  loved  one  to  live 
up  to  that  ideal.  Christ's  love  led  the  Magdalene  to  see 
in  herself  the  possibilities  which  He  saw  in  her.  This 
is  the  explanation  of  the  profound  statement, — "We 
love  Him  because  He  first  loved  us."  God's  love  idealizes 
men.     The  man  who  feels  as  the  Magdalene  felt — 

"That  all   I   could  never  be. 
All  men  ignored  in  me. 
This  I  was  worth  to  God," 

has  the  secret  by  which  he  will  become  other  than  what 
he  is.  It  matters  much  what  he  thinks  God  thinks  about 
him. 

We  have,  then,  in  the  deliverance  of  the  Magdalene, 
through  the  love  of  another  for  her,  a  principle  of  common 
and  universal  application.     It  furnishes  the  key  to  the 


DELIVERANCE  THROUGH  LOVE  89 

right  and  helpful  attitude  to  the  whole  of  life.  This 
attitude  means  that  a  man  will  look  in  his  brother  man, 
not  for  pin  points,  but  for  possibilities.  No  doubt  he 
can  find  pin  points,  if  he  looks  for  them.  No  doubt, 
either,  he  can  find  possibilities,  if  he  look  for  them.  Which 
he  chooses  to  look  for  is  for  him  to  decide.  In  deciding 
which  attitude  to  deliberately  adopt,  the  strangely  beauti- 
ful story  of  the  Magdalene  is  of  supreme  value. 

The  one  great  principle  which  that  story  embodies 
and  emphatically  asserts  is  that  the  best  things  in  life 
always  come  through  appreciation,  not  through  deprecia- 
tion. For  the  man  who  reads  a  book  in  a  critical  spirit 
with  no  sympathetic  appreciation,  the  book  has  little 
to  say.  For  the  man  who  approaches  a  painting  with 
no  spirit  of  appreciation,  the  picture  has  no  message. 
Likewise  the  man  who  approaches  his  fellows  with  an  eye 
open  only  for  their  defects  and  with  no  appreciation  of 
their  possibilities,  gives  to  them  nothing  but  despair  and 
gets  from  them  nothing  but  a  negative  response. 

Love  is  said  to  be  blind.  No  statement  is  more 
untrue,  for  nothing  is  so  keen-eyed  as  love.  If  you  want 
to  know  a  man's  defects,  ask  his  wife.  Love  is  blind  only 
in  the  sense  that  it  deliberately  shuts  its  eyes  to  defects, 
and  centers  its  attention  on  the  possibilities  in  order  to 
help  them  grow  and  crowd  out  the  defects.  No  other 
kind  of  love  is  worth  the  having.     Only  so  can  one  be 


90  "THE  MAGDALENE"— GUERCINO 

delivered  either  from  ignorance  or  from  moral  weakness; 
only  so  was  the  Magdalene  delivered ;  only  so  can  deliver- 
ance of  any  kind  come.  Men's  thought  of  the  possibilities 
which  God's  love  sees  in  them  is  the  greatest  creative 
power  in  hiiman  life,  for,  by  it  men  are  delivered  from 
what  they  are,  as  the  Magdalene  was  delivered,  through 
the  idealizing  love  of  Jesus. 


VI 
David  and  Saul 

From  a  painting  by  Simeon  Solomon 


By  Simeon  Solomon 

he  original  of  this  subject  is  a  pencil  drawing,  thirteen 
jiui  one-half  by  nineteen  inches.  It  is  now  in  London.  "Study 
your  Plutarch  and  paint,"  was  the  advice  given  by  David,  the 
great  French  classicist,  to  his  pupil,  Grqs.  Solomon  acted  on  this 
advice,  for  what  Plutarch  did  with  his  pen  for  the  strong  men 
of  the  past,  Solomon  has  done  with  his  pencil  for  David  and  Saul. 
He  has  made  the  character  of  each  stand  out  vividly.  He  has 
made  the  features  of  the  face  accurately  embody  the  central 
motive  that  dominated  each  man.  The  picture  is  a  good  example 
of  an  ideal  portrait.  ♦ 


VI 

Interpretation 
The  Language  of  the  Face 


"A  wicked  man  hardeneth  his  face." 

Proverbs. 

"The  countenance  is  the  portrait  of  the  soul.  " 

Cicero. 


"The  face,  an  evidence 
Of  the  soul  at  work  inside.  " 


Browning. 


"And  it  came  to  pass,  when  the  evil  spirit  from  God  was 
upon  Saul,  that  David  took  the  harp,  and  played  with  his  hands; 
so  Saul  was  refreshed  and  was  well,  and  the  evil  spirit  departed 
from  him.  " 

Samuel. 

Fitzgerald  and  Tennyson  were  one  day  looking  at  two  busts 
of  David  and  Goethe.  "What  is  there  wanting  in  Goethe," 
asked  Fitzgerald,  "which  the  other  has?"  Tennyson  at  once 
replied,  "the  divine  intensity." 

"Wherefore  it  is  to  be  known  that  in  whatever  part  the 
soul  most  fulfils  its  office,  it  strives  most  earnestly  to  adorn 
that  part.  Wherefore  we  see  that  in  the  Face  of  Man,  it  causes 
that  no  face  is  like  another,  because  its  utmost  power  over 
matter,  which  is  dissimilar  in  almost  all,  is  there  brought  into 
action,  and  because,  in  the  face  the  Soul  works  especially  in  two 
places,  that  is,  in  the  eyes  and  in  the  mouth;  these  it  chiefly 
adorns  and  there  it  spends  its  care  to  make  all  beautiful,  if  it 
can.  " 

Dante, 


(96) 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  THE  FACE 

An  old  riddle  asks,  "What  is  the  greatest  wonder 
God  wrought  in  a  small  thing?"  "The  human  face,"  was 
the  answer,  "in  that  God  made  so  many  and  no  two  are 
alike."  The  face  is  a  wonder  also  because  of  what  it  is 
able  both  to  hide  and  to  reveal  at  the  same  time.  Howells 
makes  Silas  Lapham  say,  "The  astonishing  thing  to  me 
is,  not  what  a  face  tells,  but  what  it  don't  tell.  When  you 
think  what  a  man  is,  and  what  most  of  'em  have  been 
through  before  they  get  to  be  thirty,  it  seems  as  if  their 
experience  would  burn  right  through,  but  it  don't." 
While  the  face  hides  the  facts  of  a  man's  experience,  it  at 
the  same  time  reveals  the  true  spirit  of  a  man's  life. 
It  is  the  exhibition  room  of  his  thoughts. 

Simeon  Solomon,  in  his  picture,  "David  and  Saul," 
has  attempted  to  make  portraits  of  the  two  men  without 
having  any  suggestion  from  a  model.  He  is  justified 
because  of  the  accepted  general  law  that  the  face  is  an 
index  of  the  soul.  His  picture  is,  therefore,  the  truest 
of  all  portraits.  He  paints  the  mind  as  well  as  the  body. 
He  makes  the  eye  no  mere  organ  of  vision,  but  the  window 
of  the  soul.     He  reveals  the  man  behind  the  face. 

(97) 


98        "DAVID  AND  SAUL"— SIMEON  SOLOMON 

The  picture  represents  the  episode  in  which  David 
is  sent  for,  as  the  one  man  who  can  charm  away  Saul's 
demon  of  madness.  Henceforth  the  two  men  are  bound 
up  in  the  bundle  of  life  together.  The  Bible  and  picture, 
alike,  represent  them  side  by  side;  Saul,  moody,  melan- 
choly, his  great  spear  always  by  his  side;  David,  fresh 
from  the  fields,  with  his  harp  and  shepherd's  crook,  the 
one  bright  spirit  in  a  gloomy  court.  The  artist  has  given 
the  two  men  tell-tale  faces.  On  Saul's  is  the  blackness  of 
despair,  on  David's  the  light  of  love. 

The  picture  gives  the  explanation  of  David's  un- 
usually gracious  conduct  towards  Saul.  The  same  ex- 
planation is  given  in  Browning's  poem,  "Saul."  Both 
the  poem  and  the  picture  represent  the  same  moment  in 
David's  life,  and  hence  explain  each  other,  and  both  inter- 
pret the  Biblical  scene.  The  poem's  explanation  is  given 
in  a  dramatic  climax, — David  comes  to  charm  away  with 
music  the  evil  spirit,  which  the  Bible  says,  choked  the 
King.  He  untwists  from  his  harp  the  lilies  that  were 
twined  around  the  strings  to  keep  them  cool.  He  sings 
many  songs  to  show  the  King  what  sane  joyous  living 
ought  to  be  in  God's  fair  world.  He  plays  the  pastoral 
tunes,  known  to  the  sheep  and  to  the  animals,  which  Saint 
Francis  used  to  call  his  brothers  and  sisters.  He  plays 
the  tune  of  the  reapers  to  remind  the  lonely  King  of  the 
good   friendship   of  the   toilers.     He  sings   the  funeral 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  THE  FACE  99 

march,  the  marriage  chant,  and  wild  joys  of  living.  He 
sings  the  memories  of  childhood,  the  gray  hairs  of  father 
and  the  thin  hands  of  mother.  At  this  the  sullen  King 
becomes  aroused;  his  mad  glare  is  gone.  He  puts  out  his 
hand  and  tenderly  touches  the  brow  of  the  beautiful 
young  harpist. 

In  that  moment  David  is  seized  with  a  passion  of  love 
for  the  saddened  soul  of  the  unhappy  King,  and  he  thus 
expresses  the  discovery  he  then  made, — 

"Could  I  wrestle  to  raise  him  from  sorrow,  grow  poor  to 

enrich, 
To  fill  up  his  life,  starve  my  own  out,  I  would — knowing 

which, 
I  know  that  my  service  is  perfect.     Oh,  speak  through 

me  now! 
Would  I  suffer  for  him  that  I  love?    So  wouldst  thou — 

so  wilt  thou ! 
He  who  did  most,  shall  bear  most;  O  Saul,  it  shall  be 
A  Face  like  my  face  that  receives  thee;  a  Man  like  to  me 
Thou  shalt  love  and  be  loved  by, forever:  a  Hand  like 

this  hand 
Shall  throw  open  the  gates  of  new  life  to  thee !    See  the 

Christ  stand!" 

In  that  hour  DaviH  saw  the  wonder  of  love,  the  vica- 
rious love  of  one  man  for  another.  And  through  his  human 
love,  he  saw  what  God's  love  is  like.     He  says  his  face  was 


loo      "DAVID  AND  SAUL"— SIMEON  SOLOMON 

to  Saul,  as  the  face  of  God,  a  remark  that  Jacob  once  made 
of  Esau's  face.  Both  poem  and  picture  accurately  repre- 
sent the  feeling  which  the  Bible  says  David  had  for  Saul 
during  his  whole  life,  a  feeling  best  embodied  in  David's 
lament  after  the  battle  of  Gilboa. 

The  face  of  a  pure  soul  is  God's  smile,  as  David's 
must  have  seemed  to  Saul.  Such  a  face  is  the  best  image, 
in  nature,  of  God's  likeness.  The  picture's  comment  on 
David  and  Saul  is  that  all  external  beauty,  the  beauty  of 
facial  expression,  of  actions,  of  words,  is  born  of  internal 
spiritual  beauty. 

"The  heart  ay's  the  part  ay 
That  makes  us  right  or  wrang." 

All  real  beauty  is  organic;  it  is  not  mere  superficial 
decoration.  It  is  the  flowering  out  of  an  internal  prin- 
ciple. It  was  David's  heart  that  made  his  face  to  be  like 
the  face  which  the  artist  has  given  him. 

When  Jean  Valjean,  the  ex-convict,  but  now  rich  and 
respected  and  the  mayor  of  the  town  in  which  he  lived, 
stood  in  the  court  room  of  a  distant  village  and  con- 
fessed his  identity  to  save  the  innocent  man,  who  was  being 
condemned  to  the  galleys  in  his  stead,  the  judge  and 
lawyer  saw  a  strange  light  upon  the  mayor's  face.  It 
was  a  radiant  light,  reflected  from  within;  from  his  brave 
and  honorable  deed. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  THE  FACE  xoi 

During  the  boxer  war  in  China,  the  Chinese  Christians 
could  not  have  escaped  even  if  they  had  tried,  because 
their  faces  betrayed  them.  There  was  a  light  on  their 
faces  which  made  them  marked  men.  The  radiant  new 
light  in  their  hearts  had  engraved  itself  on  their  faces. 

When  Longfellow  died,  Emerson  had  lost  his  memory 
for  facts,  but  not  for  principles,  and,  as  he  stood  by  the 
dead  body  of  his  friend,  he  said, "  I  do  not  know  who  he  is, 
but  he  must  have  had  a  beautiful  soul."  Rightly  had 
he  read  the  language  of  his  friend's  face,  and  rightly  has 
the  artist  read  the  heart  of  David  and  Saul,  and  written 
his  reading,  concretely,  in  their  faces. 


VII 
Love  and  Death 

From  a  painting  by  George  F.  Watts 


LOVE  AND  DEATH 
By  George  F.  Watts 

This  is  one  of  the  best  known  and  most  finished  of  Watts' 
pictures.  He  presented  the  originaf  to  the  City  of  Manchester. 
He  presented  a  replica  of  it  to  the  Tate  Gallery,  London.  It  is 
ligh  and  three  feet  ten  inches  wide.  Technically, 
r  li  characteristic  of  Watts,  in  that  he  painted  so  many  pictures 
m  which  the  leading  figures'  backs  alone  are  seen.  Watts  has 
been  called  the  discoverer  of  the  artistic  effect  o^  the  human 
back.  The  picture  is  characteristic  also  in  its  theme,  in  that 
it  is  one  of  a  dozen  pictures  on  the  same  subject  in  which  the 
artist  has  sought  to  disarm  death  of  its  terror. 


VII 

Interpretation 
Death  as  a  Private  Tutor 


"I  shall  go  softly  with  dignity  and  caution,  as  in  a  pro- 
cession, all  my  years,  because  of  the  bitterness  of  my  soul.  Ah 
Lord,  it  is  upon  these  things  that  men  live;  and  wholly  therein 
is  the  life  of  my  spirit.  Behold,  for  perfection  was  it  bitter  to  me, 
so  bitter. " 

Isaiah. 

"The  great  touchstone  of  a  philosophy  or  a  religion  is  its 
treatment  of  death.  A  man's  creed,  or  his  soul,  is  to  be  gauged, 
not  indeed  by  the  way  he  meets  death, — for  many  accidents  for- 
eign to  the  soul,  may  interfere  in  the  death  hour, — but  by  the 
way  he  views  death.  " 

P.   H.  Forsyth. 

"The  mere  lapse  of  years  is  not  life.  To  eat  and  drink 
and  sleep,  to  be  exposed  to  darkness  and  to  light,  to  pace  round 
in  the  mill  of  habit,  to  turn  thought  into  an  implement  of  trade. 
This  is  not  life.  In  all  this  but  a  poor  fraction  of  the  conscious- 
ness of  humanity  is  awakened,  and  the  sanctities  will  slumber 
which  make  it  worth  while  to  be.  Knowledge,  truth,  love, 
beauty,  goodness,  faith,  alone  can  give  vitality  to  the  mechanism 
of  existence.  The  laugh  and  mirth  that  vibrate  through  the 
heart,  the  tears  that  freshen  the  dry  wastes  within,  the  music 
that  brings  childhood  back,  the  prayer  that  calls  the  future  near, 
the  doubt  that  makes  us  meditate,  the  death  that  startles  us 
with  mystery,  the  hardship  that  forces  us  to  struggle,  the  anxiety 
which  ends  in  trust, — are  the  true  nourishment  of  our  natural 
being.  " 

James  Martineau. 


(io8) 


DEATH  AS  A  PRIVATE  TUTOR 

Dean  Stanley  says  he  does  not  recollect  that  there  is 
an3nvhere  in  Greek  poetry,  the  emblem  of  the  setting  sun. 
The  Greek  deliberately  turned  away  from  the  somber 
and  sad.  He  refused  to  think  of  the  mystery  of  life  and 
death.  On  the  question  of  physical  death,  the  modern 
Christian  still  shares  the  Greek  attitude.  He  still  looks 
on  death  as  an  enemy.  The  feeling  of  resentment 
expressed  in  the  dirge  of  Hezekiah  after  he  had 
his  near  view  of  death,  is  still  shared  to  a  degree  by 
all  men. 

In  the  struggle  of  love  against  death,  in  Watts' 
picture,  the  artist  has  expressed  the  natural  feeling  of  the 
human  heart.  All  who  look  at  the  picture  are  instinc- 
tively on  love's  side.  The  background  of  the  picture  is 
the  entrance  of  a  happy  home,  to  which  the  tragedy  of 
life  has  now  come.  Pushing  into  the  doorway  is  the 
gigantic  draped  figure  of  the  foe  that  men  fear,  with  back 
towards  us  and  coming  with  slow,  steady,  irresistible 
force.  Love  is  in  the  form  of  a  winged  youth,  frantically 
and  hopelessly  barring  the  entrance.  His  wings  are 
broken  in  the  fray  and  his  roses  strewn  upon  the  ground. 

(109) 


no     "LOVE  AND  DEATH"— GEORGE  F.  WATTS 

The  turtle-dove  with  its  one  tone  of  monotonous  sadness 
lends  a  touch  of  weird  loneliness. 

The  sense  of  the  blight  and  helplessness  and  loneli- 
ness of  the  experience,  which  most  men  know  so  well,  are 
all  here.  It  was  out  of  this  feeling  indeed  that  the  picture 
arose.  Watts  was  painting  the  portrait  of  a  brilliant  young 
friend  who  was  dying  by  inches  during  the  sittings.  He 
had  all  that  rank  and  fortune  could  give,  and  everything 
that  love  and  skill  could  do  was  done  to  keep  death  at 
bay,  but  it  was  utterly  unavailable.  The  memory  of  this 
situation  haunted  the  artist  and  ultimately  found  ex- 
pression in  his  great  picture.  The  truth  of  the  picture 
finds  echo  in  many  a  heart  as  it  did  in  Lowell's,  who  wrote 
shortly  after  the  death  of  his  little  daughter,  Rose, 

"Console,  if  you  will,  I  can  bear  it, 
'Tis  a  well-meant  alms  of  breath. 
But  not  all  the  preaching  since  Adam 
Has  made  death  other  than  death. 

"That  little  shoe  in  the  corner 

So  worn  and  wrinkled  and  brown, 
With  its  emptiness  confutes  you 
And  argues  your  wisdom  down. " 

Whilst  the  artist,  in  his  picture,  has  expressed  a 
feeling  felt  most  keenly,  when  in  the  struggle  against  an 
apparently  cruel  foe,  and  never  wholly  forgotten,  yet  he 
is   not  a  Greek  but  a  Christian,  and  therefore  this  feeling 


DEATH  AS  A  PRIVATE  TUTOR  m 

is  only  half  the  picture's  story.  Watts  has  put  about 
death  a  splendor  that  robs  it  of  half  its  sting.  To  him 
it  was  inevitable,  but  not  terrible.  It  partially,  but  not 
completely,  overshadows  love.  His  figure  of  death  is  a 
woman,  implying  that  she  is  a  nurse,  consoler,  and  the 
mother  of  another  life.  Her  head  is  bowed  in  pity  as  she 
comes,  her  face  is  veiled  and  her  tenderly  outstretched 
arm  is  like  the  shadow  of  a  protecting  wing.  To  those 
who  go,  "death,"  as  Watts  once  said,  "is  that  kind  nurse 
who  puts  us  all  as  her  children  to  bed." 

But  what  about  those  who  remain?  This  is  the  heart 
of  the  tragedy.  For  the  cruelty  of  death  does  not  lie 
in  the  loss  of  one's  own  life,  but  in  making  desolate  those 
who  might  otherwise  have  been  happy.  It  is  to  them 
that  the  picture  brings  its  greatest  message.  The  chief 
point  of  the  picture  is  the  great  light  which  falls  on  death's 
back  from  a  source  outside  the  picture.  Death  leaves  a 
train  of  light  behind  her  for  those  who  are  left,  which 
they  see  only  when  she  is  gone  by.  By  this  the  artist  says 
that  death  is  a  private  tutor,  teaching  each  man  who 
walks  in  her  pure  white  light,  things  he  could  not  other- 
wise know.  From  the  beginning  death  has  been  the 
mightiest  teacher  of  men.  Hezekiah  says  that  in  spite 
of  his  natural  feeling,  death  taught  him  the  things  by 
which  men  truly  live;  taught  him  a  new  dignity  and 
caution;  made  his  spirit  alive  by  bringing  into  time  a  sense 


112  "LOVE  AND  DEATH"— GEORGE  F.  WATTS 

of  eternity,  and  hereafter  he  would  walk  "with  the  step 
and  mien  of  a  conqueror." 

George  Eliot's  "Legend  of  Jubal"  graphically  de- 
scribes the  condition  of  man  before  and  after  he  knew 
death,  and  shows  the  value  of  death  as  a  tutor.  Fair- 
bairn  has  well  stated  the  poem's  teaching.  In  the  old 
soft  sweet  days,  when  all  that  was  known  of  death  was 
the  single  black  spot  in  the  memory  of  Cain,  his  descend- 
ants lived  in  gladsome  idleness;  they  played,  sang, 
loved,  and  danced  in  a  life  that  had  no  gravity  and  no 
greatness;  but  when  the  second  death  came  and  men 
saw  that  there  was  a  sleep  from  which  there  was  no  awak- 
ing, a  new  meaning  stole  into  life, — the  horizon,  which 
limited  it,  defined  it  and  made  it  great.  Time  took  a 
new  value;  affection,  by  growing  more  serious,  became 
nobler;  the  thought  of  possible  loss  touched  with  tender- 
ness all  the  relations  of  life.  The  limit  set  to  time  drove 
their  thoughts  out  towards  eternity.  Without  it  man 
would  have  had  no  sense  of  kinship  with  the  Infinite,  for 
the  finite  would  have  been  enough  for  him.  It  is  a  poor 
and  pitiful  dream  to  imagine  that  it  were  a  happier 
state,  were  man  to  know  no  death,  but  to  endure  in 
characteristic  innocency,  never  feeling  the  light  within  him 
made  resplendent  by  the  darkness,  which  death  shed  with- 
out. For  death  breathed  into  life  the  spirit  out  of  which 
all  tragic  and  all  heroic  things  come.    The  light  in  Watts' 


DEATH  AS  A  PRIVATE  TUTOR  113 

picture  is  what  George  Eliot's  imagination  saw.  It  is 
what  countless  numbers  of  men  have  seen  in  their  own 
experience. 

The  effect  of  the  death  of  Beatrice  on  Dante  may 
be  taken  as  a  typical  illustration  of  the  truth  of  the  "Le- 
gend of  Jubal."  It  did  not  convert  his  love  into  remorse. 
It  sanctified  it.  It  inspired  him  with  a  new  ambition. 
It  imposed  new  and  solemn  duties.  It  induced  him  to 
strive  to  render  himself  more  worthy  of  her.  It  enlarged 
his  heart.  "Whensoever  she  appeared  before  me  in 
vision,"  he  says,  "the  flame  of  charity  kindled  within  me, 
caused  me  to  forgive  all  who  had  ever  offended  me." 
This  is  the  light  which  Watts  says  the  tutor  death  sheds 
on  man's  pathway,  and  because  of  which,  death  is  no  more 
evil  than  its  counterpart  birth,  but  is,  rather,  a  positive 
good.  The  tangible  evidence  that  death  brings  light  in 
her  train  is  the  fact  that  she  teaches  men  how  for  the  first 
time  truly  to  live. 


VIII 

The  Scapegoat 

From  a  painting  by  Holman  Hunt 


THE  SCAPEGOAT 
By  Holman  Hunt 

The  original  of  this  picture  was  painted  in  Palestine,  and 
sent  to  England  for  the  Royal  Academy  Exhibition  in  1856. 
It  is  now  in  the  possession  of  Sir  Cuthbert  Quilter.  It  was 
painted  at  Oosdoom,  on  the  salt-encrusted  shallows  of  the  Dead 
Sea,  where  Dr.  Hunt  spent  three  months  laying  in  the  back- 
ground of  his  picture.  The  mountains  beyond  are  those  of 
Edom.  In  the  figure  of  the  goat,  Mr.  Hunt  does  what  no  other 
painter  has  ever  done,  he  has  made  an  animal  the  symbol  of  a 
distinctly  spiritual  idea.  The  picture  is  a  fine  illustration  of 
symbolism  in. its  best  sense.  The  goat,  whilst  painted  true  to 
life,  is  made  almost  to  speak.  The  mountains,  whilst  literal 
to  the  last  touch,  have  a  language.  It  is  not  the  reading  in  of 
far-fetched  meanings,  but  the  choosing  of  those  forms  in  the 
outer  world,   which   stand   as    the    natural    speech    of    inward 


rr 

VIII 

Interpretation 
An  Enemy  of  Himself 


"He  that  sinneth  against  me  wrongeth  his  own  soul,  " 

Proverbs. 

"What  a  man  takes  from  himself,  it  is  not  just  he  have.  " 

Dante. 

"My  stress  lay  on  the  incidents,  in  the  development  of  a 
a  soul;  little  else  is  worth  study." 

Browning. 

"A  man's  first  care  should  be  to  avoid  the  reproaches  of 
his  own  heart;  his  next  to  escape  the  censures  of  the  world;  if 
the  last  interferes  with  the  former,  it  ought  to  be  entirely  neg- 
lected. 

Addison. 

"I  sent  my  soul  through  the  invisible, 

Some  letter  of  that  after-life   to   spell, 
And  by  and  by  my  soul  returned  to  me, 

And  answered,  'I  myself  am  Heaven  and  Hell. ' " 

Omar  Khayyam. 

"Before  I  commit  a  sin,  it  seems  to  me  so  shallow  that  I 
may  wade  through  it  dry-shod  from  any  guiltiness,  but  when  I 
have  committed  it,  it  often  seems  so  deep  that  I  cannot  escape 
without  drowning.  " 

Thomas  Fuller. 


(120) 


AN  ENEMY  OF  HIMSELF 

"An  empt}'  little  shoe,"  says  Forsyth,  "will  unman 
the  strongest."  It  is  a  slight  symbol,  but  most  effective 
in  hinting  and  recalling  a  whole  world  of  past  and  tender 
memories. 

The  chief  feature  of  the  Old  Testament  ritual  was  its 
use  of  such  simple  and  effective  symbols  to  hint  and 
suggest  spiritual  thought  and  emotion  which  could  not  be 
put  into  words.  Among  its  many  symbols,  one  of  the 
most  effective  was  that  of  the  scapegoat. 

The  economy  of  Judaism  centered  in  the  Day  of 
Atonement.  On  this  day  the  priest,  after  going  through 
scrupulous  ceremonies  of  cleansing,  took  two  goats 
exactly  alike.  Lots  were  cast — one  was  elected  for 
immediate  sacrifice  by  a  lot  marked  "for  Jehovah." 
The  other  was  elected  to  be  the  scapegoat  by  a  lot  marked 
"for  Azazel."  A  red  fillet  of  wool  was  tied  around  its 
horns  to  distinguish  it.  The  priest  put  both  his  hands 
upon  its  head  and  confessed  the  sins  of  the  people.  While 
this  was  going  on  the  people  showed  their  impatience  by 
calling  on  the  priest  to  hasten  the  departure  of  the  scape- 
goat.    He  was  then  led  away  to  a  cliflf  about  ten  miles 

(121) 


122         "THE  SCAPEGOAT"— HOLM  AN  HUNT 

from  Jerusalem,  in  the  region  of  the  Dead  Sea,  there  to 
wander  till  he  died.  These  symbols  stood  for  two  distinct 
ideas;  one  was  the  blight  which  sin  brought  on  human 
life;  the  other  was  the  desire  to  get  rid  of  it. 

One  of  these  truths  has  been  made  vivid  for  us  by 
Hunt's  picture,  "The  Scapegoat."  To  express  it,  the 
artist  has  used  three  natural  symbols.  In  the  back- 
ground are  the  mountain  ranges  of  Moab,  upon  which 
Moses  died.  Its  porphyry  rock  is  lit  up  by  the  parting 
light  of  the  setting  sun.  The  splendor  of  the  color  of  the 
hills  suggest  that  there  ought  to  rest  on  nature  and  man, 
not  a  curse,  but  a  natural  glory.  Just  at  the  foot  of  the 
mountains  lies  the  Dead  Sea,  with  its  salt  ooze  and  life- 
less waste,  as  a  symbol  of  the  bhght  of  sin.  The  salt  is 
caked  and  crusted  along  the  low  shore.  1 1  looks  like  snow. 
But  the  suggestion  of  the  beauty  of  a  snow-covered  beach 
serves  only  to  heighten  the  hard,  hopeless  blight  of  this 
shore.  In  such  a  place  the  soft  light  of  the  rising  moon  is 
marred,  for  in  the  disc  of  the  moon's  reflection  on  the 
damp  shore  is  seen  the  bleached  skull  of  a  goat,  the  victim 
of  a  past  year.  In  the  foreground  stands  a  heavy  and 
shaggy  goat,  its  bleeding  feet  breaking  through  the 
crusted  salt,  gasping  with  fatigue,  ready  to  die.  Its 
forelegs  tremble  and  its  hindlegs  are  outspread  as  if  it 
were  bearing  up  against  some  outside  load.  The  artist's 
masterly  power  is  seen  in  the  fact,  that,  as  we  look  at  the 


AN  ENEMY  OF  HIMSELF  123 

creature,  the  chief  thing  we  notice  is  not  its  physical 
suflfering,  but  the  pressure  of  the  invisible  burden  that 
weighs  it  down.  Hunt's  picture  is  at  once  a  history  and  a 
poem.  It  recalls  a  great  historic  rite  of  the  past,  and  it 
haunts  the  imagination  as  a  ghost-like  vision. 

The  truth  so  vividly  represented  in  the  ancient  rite, 
and  in  Hunt's  picture,  is  that  the  chief  effect  of  sin  is  the 
blight  it  brings  to  the  soul;  that  the  wrong  a  man  does 
to  himself  is  the  worst  part  of  the  punishment  of  sin;  that 
the  man  who  sins  is  a  moral  suicide;  that  every  sin  against 
God  is  a  sin  against  oneself.  In  the  Louvre  at  Paris  hang 
two  portraits  of  Rembrandt  painted  by  himself.  In  one, 
the  artist  paints  himself  as  a  young  man  full  of  life  and 
courage  and  in  all  the  bravery  of  rich  garments.  The  little 
mustache  is  twirled  up  audaciously,  the  bright  brown  eyes 
are  alight  with  the  foreknowledge  of  victory.  The  other 
portrait  represents  him  about  the  age  of  fifty,  prematurely 
old.  "The  dress  is  untidy,  even  dirty;  an  old  cloth  is  on 
his  head,  a  discolored  rag  around  his  throat;  the  mus- 
tache draggled;  patches  of  grey  hairs  grow  like  sedge 
round  the  jaws  and  the  searching  eyes  have  become 
intensely  sad,  darkened,  as  it  were,  by  the  shadow  of 
inevitable  death. "  Between  these  two  portraits  lies  a  sad 
tragedy.  Between  them  lies  the  middle  period  of  his  life, 
with  its  public  shame.  In  the  second  picture  the  artist, 
during  a  season  of  remorse,  has  painted  the  blight  which 


124  "THE  SCAPEGOAT"— HOLM  AN  HUNT 

had  fallen  on  his  soul.  He  had  murdered  his  better 
nature. 

Hunt's  picture  does  men  a  great  service  in  reminding 
them  of  this  spiritual  tragedy,  because  it  is  a  singular 
thing  that  the  deterioration  of  the  soul  is  the  very  part 
of  the  punishment  of  sin  which  men  think  of  least  of  all. 
What  they  think  of  most  is  the  exposure  of  the  sin.  It  is 
on  this  external  side  that  the  novelist  and  dramatist 
centers  his  attention.  He  thinks  the  v/orst  thing  that 
can  happen  to  a  man  is  detection,  and  the  public  shame 
and  loss  of  social  position.  In  point  of  fact,  detection 
would  be  a  blessing,  because  lie  who  is  undetected  only 
gets  worse.  The  real  tragedy  which  the  novelist  and 
dramatist  and  the  average  man  do  not  see  is  the  debase- 
ment of  the  soul  itself.  This  fact  about  sin  is  eternally 
true,  whatever  terms  are  used  to  describe  it.  Whatever 
philosophical  explanations  are  given  of  its  origin  and 
nature,  the  effects  it  produces  have  always  remained  the 
same.  It  weakens  the  will  and  causes  a  disintegration  of 
character  which,  unless  it  is  arrested,  ends  in  ultimate 
wreckage. 

The  truth  for  which  Hunt's  picture  stands  corrects 
the  common  error  that  sin  may  not  always  be  punished; 
that  the  man  who  sins,  like  a  soldier  in  battle,  may  escape 
the  bullet  and  come  out  unscathed.  The  picture  says 
that  no  man  can  ever  sin  and  remain  morally  clean.     Sin 


AN  ENEMY  OF  HIMSELF  125 

and  its  due  results  are  always  "riveted  together,"  as 
Plato  said.  Whilst  the  outward  consequences  of  sin  are 
not  always  uniform,  the  inward  always  are.  Dr.  J.  W. 
Dawson  finds  the  best  illustration  of  this  fact  in  the  sin 
against  love.  The  young  man  who  sins  against  love 
wastes  himself  on  those  shallow  indulgences  of  affection 
which  leave  the  soul  sterile  and  the  heart  empty.  He 
thinks  he  can  squander  purity  and  still  have  enough  pure 
passion  left  to  realize  an  intense  and  noble  love,  such  as  a 
Dante's  or  a  Kingsley's.  But  when  he  comes  to  the 
great  sacramental  hour  of  love,  he  discovers  in  himself  a 
soul-stain  and  a  thought-leprosy  which  have  blighted 
him  with  an  incapacity  of  love  in  any  great  and  noble  way. 
He  discovers  that  the  Nemesis  of  all  unbridled  animal 
indulgence  is  that  the  desire  grows  faster  than  its  satis- 
faction. He  discovers  that  he  has  murdered  part  of  his 
soul. 

This  is  the  truth  embodied  in  Hunt's  picture,  but  the 
picture  is  not  without  hope.  The  artist  has  put  into  it  the 
beauty  of  nature  seen  in  the  hills,  to  remind  men  of  what 
they  ought  to  be.  He  has  put  over  the  blight  of  the  Dead 
Sea  a  rainbow  of  promise,  which  is  not  visible  in  the  re- 
production, to  indicate  what  men  may  still  become,  and 
the  scapegoat  in  the  old  ritual  itself  stands  for  an  effort  to 
get  rid  of  the  blight  of  sin. 

Whilst  men  may  "waste  and  desecrate  their  man- 


126  "THE  SCAPEGOAT"— HOLMAN  HUNT 

hood,"  one  cannot  say  that  they  ever  quite  lost  it.  The 
artist  believed  that  God  could  re-make  the  soul  which  the 
man  himself  had  unmade,  but  he  does  well  to  put  his  chief 
emphasis  on  the  blight  of  sin,  because  men's  use  of  the 
means  of  discovery  depends  on  their  appreciation  of  what 
the  disease  is.  Forgiveness  never  comes  to  a  man  till  the 
sin  in  his  soul  is  stopped,  not  that  the  act  of  forgiveness  is 
dependent  on  repentance,  but  the  effect  of  forgiveness  is. 
For  the  object  of  forgiveness  is  not  to  remove  the  penalty 
of  sin,  but  to  arrest  the  process  of  disintegration  and  im- 
part to  the  soul  the  power  of  moral  recovery. 

Whilst  the  distinctive  glory  of  Christianity  is  its 
good  news  that  there  is  always  the  possibility  of  forgive- 
ness and  moral  recovery,  yet  no  man  can  look  at  the  truth 
of  life  embodied  in  Hunt's  picture  without  seeing  that 
there  is  something  better  than  God's  forgiveness.  So  far 
as  the  father  is  concerned,  it  is  possible  for  the  prodigal  to 
return,  but  it  is  better  for  the  prodigal  never  to  leave  the 
old  home,  or  to  forfeit  the  father's  approval.  Christ's 
story  takes  us  no  farther  than  the  return  of  the  prodigal. 
From  that  time  on  his  life  was  that  of  a  crippled  soldier. 
He  was  a  soldier,  and  he  was  home,  and  he  was  forgiven, 
but  he  was  a  crippled  soldier  still. 

What  Hunt's  picture  says  is  that  the  gain  of  wrong- 
doing is  not  worth  the  price;  that,  because  a  man  has  to 
live  with  himself,  his  chief  business  is  to  keep  the  bridal 


AN  ENEMY  OF  HIMSELF  127 

adornments  of  his  soul  bright  and  pure.  It's  of  little  use 
to  guard  the  outposts  while  the  citadel  itself  is  in  danger. 
The  picture  calls  on  men,  in  tones  like  the  solemn  tolling 
of  a  bell,  to  make  it  their  chief  concern  to  guard,  not  any- 
thing external  or  foreign  to  their  inner  life,  like  their 
wealth  or  reputation  or  social  position,  but  to  guard  their 
own  souls  from  blight  and  decay.  Holman  Hunt  bids 
all  men  to  do  for  their  own  souls  what  Tennyson  bids 
Englishmen  to  do  for  their  own  country: 

"Call  home  your  ships  across  Biscayan  tides. 
To  blow  the  battle  from  their  oaken  sides. 

Why  waste  you  yonder, 

Their  idle  thunder? 
Why  stay  they  there  to  guard  a  foreign  throne? 

Seamen,  guard  your  own. " 


IX 
"Jacob's   Ladder" 

From  a  painting  by  Murillo 


JACOB'S  LADDER 
By  Murillo 


The  original  of  this  picture  is  now  in  the  Hermitage  at  St. 
Petersburg.  The  subject  has  been  frequently  painted.  Of  the 
many  pictures  of  it,  the  two,  which  by  common  consent  are 
considered  the  best,  are  Rembrandt's,  now  in  the  Dulwick 
Gallery,  and  Murillo's,  reproduced  here. 


IX 

Interpretation 
The  Use  of  Dreams 


"In  a  dream,  in  a  vision  of  the  night, 
When    deep   sleep   falleth   upon    men, 
Then  He  uncovereth  the  ears  of  men, 
And    setteth   a    seal    upon    their   instruction 
To  make  man  put  away  his  evil  deed.  " 

Job. 

"The  uttered  part  of  a  man's  Hfe,  let  us  always  repeat,  bears 
to  the  unuttered  unconscious  part,  a  small  unknown  proportion. 
He  himself  never  knows  it,  much  less  do  others.  " 

Carlyle. 

"All  my  days,  I'll  go  the  softlier,  sadHer, 
For  that  dream's  sake!" 

Browning. 

"Though,  like  the  wanderer. 

Daylight  all  gone. 
Darkness  be  over  me, 

My  rest  a  stone; 
Yet  in  my  dreams  I'd  be 
Nearer,  my  God,  to  Thee 

Nearer  to  Thee. 

There  let  the  way  appear 

Steps  unto  heaven; 
All  that  Thou  send'st  me 

In  mercy  given ; 
Angels  to  beckon  me 
Nearer,   my  God,   to   Thee, 

Nearer  to  Thee.  " 

Sarah  Flower  Adams. 

"Our  sleep  is  not  only  a  great  mystery  to  philosophers,  but 
a  practical  mystery  to  all  men.  Make  as  little  of  our  dreams  as 
we  may,  they  do,  at  least,  show  us  the  fearfully  sublime  activity 
of  our  nature,  that  must  still  act,  when  we  have  no  longer  any 
will  to  action.  Sleep  is  a  spiritualizer.  By  it  the  capacity  of 
other  modes  of  existence  is  made  familiar.  We  get  a  sense  in  it 
of  ourselves  that  very  nearly  contains  that  faith.  It  is  impos- 
sible, in  this  view,  to  overrate  the  importance  of  it  in  the  moral 
training  of  souls. " 

BUSHNELL. 

(134J 


THE  USE  OF  DREAMS 

The  Greeks  and  Romans  had  great  faith  in  dreams. 
Homer  said,  "They  come  from  Jove."  The  Emperor 
Augustus,  in  obedience  to  a  dream,  went  begging  money 
through  the  streets  of  Rome.  The  strange  activity  of  the 
mind  in  sleep,  which  has  always  interested  and  puzzled 
men,  naturally  has  found  a  place  in  the  Bible.  But  the 
Bible's  use  of  dreams  is  always  sane  and  restrained  and 
devoid  of  superstition.  This  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  many 
of  its  dreams  are  the  dreams  of  men  alien  to  the  common- 
wealth of  Israel;  still  further  in  the  fact  that  many  of  the 
dreams  ascribed  to  children  of  Jehovah  belong  to  the 
period  of  their  most  imperfect  knowledge  of  Him;  most 
of  all  in  the  fact  that  .all  the  dreams  which  are  said  in  the 
Bible  to  have  been  employed  by  God,  as  means  of  com- 
munication, were  logically  connected  with  men's  waking 
thoughts,  as  in  the  case  of  Joseph,  and  Paul,  and  Pilate's 
wife.  A  dream,  to  have  any  moral  value  for  guidance, 
must  be  the  natural  outgrowth  of  the  thought  or  action  of 
a  man's  conscious  hours. 

The  true  use  of  dreams  has  never  been  better  stated 
than  in  the  remark  in  the  book  of  Job,  that  in  a  dream 

(135) 


136  "JACOB'S  LADDER"— MURILLO 

God  uncovers  the  ears  of  men  in  order  to  confirm  them 
in  a  proposed  course  of  action,  if  it  is  right,  or  to  warn 
them  against  a  proposed  course  of  action,  if  it  is  wrong. 
It  is  possible  for  a  dream  to  perform  this  two-fold  function 
because  of  a  well  known  fact  of  mental  experience.  In 
sleep  the  fiction  of  time  and  space  are  destroyed,  all 
external  impediments  and  checks  are  removed,  and 
the  mind  acts  without  interruption.  The  root  meaning 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  word  "dream"  is  "melody."  With- 
out the  discords  and  interruptions  of  the  day,  the  mind 
in  sleep  can  carry  out  a  thought  to  its  harmonious  and 
logical  conclusion.  In  this  way,  the  dream  exhibits  the 
true  nature  and  tendency  of  the  waking  thoughts,  by 
revealing  their  natural  results.  It  is  like  this:  A  poor 
woman  had  come  to  look  on  her  child  as  a  burden.  One 
night  she  dreamt  she  had  drowned  it,  and  woke  in  horror 
at  the  fancied  sound  of  the  plunge.  The  dream  warned 
her  against  her  waking  thought,  by  exhibiting  its  natural 
conclusion.  There  is  then  nothing  absurd  in  the  true 
dream.  1 1  does  a  real  service  by  revealing  the  true  inward- 
ness of  the  waking  thought. 

Jacob's  dream  at  Bethel  is  a  typical  Bible  dream. 
The  frequency  with  which  it  has  been  painted  is  a  true 
index  of  its  popularity.  The  beauty  of  Murillo's  picture 
of  it  is  matched  by  the  beauty  of  the  dream  itself.  How 
familiar  it  became  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  it  furnished 


THE  USE  OF  DREAMS  137 

almost  the  entire  imagery  of  what  is  doubtless  one  of  the 
greatest  of  English  hymns — "Nearer  my  God,  to  Thee." 
Both  the  dream,  and  the  hymn  inspired  by  it,  have 
become  immortal  because  they  are  fme  expressions  of  the 
universal  desire  for  a  more  intimate  acquaintance  with 
God,  the  desire  for  a  highway  between  the  seen  and  the 
unseen. 

Jacob's  dream  strikingly  illustrates  the  principle  of 
dreams  expressed  in  Job.  It  both  confirmed  and  cor- 
rected the  ambition  of  Jacob's  life.  It  seems  at  first  a 
psychological  puzzle  that  a  man,  so  apparently  bad, 
should  have  so  beautiful  a  dream.  The  puzzle  vanishes 
when  we  notice  what  George  Matheson  has  pointed  out, 
that  the  dream  at  Bethel  was  the  result  of  the  dream  and 
ambition  of  Jacob's  whole  past  life.  All  his  life  long  he 
had  coveted  the  birthright.  What  was  that?  In  Eng- 
land and  America  the  birthright  of  the  firstborn  means 
the  inheritance  of  material  things,  of  houses  and  lands. 
In  Jacob's  land  and  day  it  meant  the  High  Priesthood. 
For  Jacob  to  succeed  his  father,  meant  not  only  that  he 
would  be  the  ruler  of  the  clan,  but  also  the  minister  of 
religion,  the  ladder  of  communion  between  earth  and 
heaven. 

To  this  office  he  desired  to  be  heir.  But  the 
law  of  primogeniture  debarred  him.  Esau  was  the 
firstborn.     Esau    was  manifestly    unfit    for  it.    Jacob 


138  "JACOB'S  LADDER"— MURILLO 

believed  that  his  own  abilities  adapted  him  for  it.  He 
was  excluded  by  the  mere  incident  and  external  barrier  of 
birth.  About  this  he  had  fretted  and  dreamed  all  his 
life.  When  one  day  Esau  asked  him  for  a  loan,  he  con- 
sented to  make  it  on  the  condition  that  Esau  sell  him  his 
birthright.  Esau  being  controlled,  as  children  are,  by  the 
necessities  of  the  moment,  agreed  In  spite  of  the  law  of 
primogeniture  and  against  the  wishes  of  his  father,  and  by 
the  aid  of  his  mother's  wit,  Jacob  secured  the  birthright. 
But  Esau  sought  to  undo  what  he  had  done.  He  pre- 
pared to  take  vengeance  for  the  wrong  he  thought  Jacob 
had  done  him. 

Jacob  had  to  take  refuge  in  flight.  He  traveled 
in  haste  all  day  and  come  to  the  rocky  backbone  of 
Palestine  by  night;  he  lay  down  exhausted  in  this  deso- 
late waste.  He  himself  was  desolate;  a  homeless  wan- 
derer and  a  fugitive  from  justice,  with  nothing  but  his 
shepherd's  staff.  He  was  discouraged  and  lonely.  He 
doubted  whether  the  birthright  was  worth  the  price, 
whether  his  ambition  would  ever  be  satisfied,  whether 
God,  too,  had  deserted  him.  It  was  most  natural,  then, 
that  his  dream  assumed  the  form  it  did.  For  the  thought 
foremost  in  his  dream  had  been  the  chief  thought  of  his 
waking  hours.  He  regarded  his  dream  as  a  message  from 
God  in  an  hour  of  doubt  and  discouragement.  At  least 
his  desire  for  the  birthright  had  been  noble,  whatever  may 


THE  USE  OF  DREAMS  139 

be  said  of  his  method  of  getting  it.  The  ladder  that 
rested  upon  the  earth  and  against  heaven  was  the  mystic 
symbol  of  his  life's  ambition,  and  encouraged  him  to 
believe  that  he  would  one  day  be  the  medium  of  commun- 
ion between  earth  and  heaven,  as  he  had  desired  to  be. 

George  Matheson  suggests  that  the  mystical  ladder 
of  Jacob's  dream  contained  also  a  warning  against  a 
serious  defect  in  his  youthful  ambition.  Jacob  had 
craved  the  birthright,  not  so  much  for  the  love  of  it,  as 
for  the  pride  of  it.  It  would  give  him  a  position  of  com- 
manding importance.  Its  chief  characteristic  he  had  yet 
to  learn.  This  is  suggested  by  the  fact  that  the  angels 
who  ascended  the  ladder  were  the  same  also  who  descended. 
He  w-ho  would  ascend  to  the  exalted  position,  which 
Jacob  craved,  must  be  willing  to  descend  to  the  lowliest 
service  of  earth.  Paul  says  of  Christ,  that  He  who 
descended  was  the  same  as  He  who  ascended.  John 
called  Jesus,  "Jacob's  ladder." 

Jacob's  dream  showed  him  this  principle  which  his 
ambition  involved,  that  the  position  was  not  only  one  of 
power,  but  of  service,  that  it  was  not  only  a  joy,  but  a 
burden,  that  the  highest  are  the  servants  of  the  lowest, 
that  the  sinless  are  to  be  the  sin-bearers,  that  the  man 
who  most  deeply  feels  the  sin  is  not  the  man  who  com- 
mits it,  but  the  pure  in  heart  who  are  highest  on  the 
ladder  of  spiritual  elevation.     Whether  or  not  Jacob  saw 


I40  "JACOB'S  LADDER"— MURILLO 

this  principle  on  the  night  of  his  dream,  certain  it  is  that 
it  is  the  principle  he  most  needed  to  see,  and  which  later 
he  did  see. 

The  habit  of  mind  revealed  in  Jacob's  and  in  all  true 
dreams  suggests,  then,  a  principle  of  vast  importance. 
It  is  the  habit  of  looking  at  every  proposed  act  in  the 
light  of  its  ultimate  results,  the  habit  of  "seeing  life 
steadily  and  seeing  it  whole,"  the  habit  of  living  one's 
life  in  the  "light  of  eternity."  This  is  one  of  the  unique 
powers  of  the  Bible  among  the  books  of  the  world.  When 
it  looks  at  a  seed,  the  tree  stands  before  it.  When  it 
vividly  pictures  the  sowing  of  the  seed,  it  instantly  dis- 
closes the  harvest.  In  every  deed  the  Bible  foresees 
its  fruitage  in  power  or  in  misery.  This  is  the  secret  of 
its  prophetic  quality.  It  is  not  so  much  a  look  ahead; 
it  is  a  look  at  the  heart  of  things.  It  is  like  Angelo's 
picture  of  the  "Last  Judgment."  This  is  a  picture,  not 
of  a  great  event  to  come  in  a  distant  future,  but  the 
drama  of  an  eternal  process  now  going  on.  a  process  in 
which  every  moment,  men  are  being  sifted,  tried  and 
judged. 

To  thus  look  at  one's  life  after  the  manner  of  dreams, 
always  in  the  light  of  what  life  might  be,  would  do  for 
men  the  two  great  services  which  Jacob's  dream  did  for 
him.  It  v/ould  prevent  the  doing  of  many  deeds  before 
they  are  done,  as  Richter  has  so  beautifully  stated  in  his 


THE  USE  OF  DREAMS  141 

well-known  dream,  "The  Two  Paths."  It  would  also, 
in  moments  of  discouragement  and  baffled  purposes,  inspire 
the  growth  of  the  faintest  desire  and  ambition  for  good- 
ness. To  every  man  who  aspires  to  a  goodness  he  has 
never  attained,  Jacob's  dream  and  Murillo's  picture  of 
it  say, — 

"All  we  have  willed,  or  hoped,  or  dreamed 
of  good  shall  exist,  not  its  semblance  but 
itself." 


X 

Death  Staying  the  Hand  of 
the  Sculptor 

From  a  photograph  of  the  original  work  in  bronze  and  stone 
By  Daniel  C.  French 


t 


I 


DEATH  STAYING  THE  HAND  OF  THE  SCULPTOR 

.!s  piece  nr  sculpture  is  a  monument  at  Forest  Hills  Ceme- 
^.■=ton,  Jn  memory  of    Martin    Milmore,  a  young  sculptor 
■beautifully    appropriate    because    Milmore 
bc   ar   ine    oeginning   of  what   promised   to  be  a   brilliant 
areer  in  art.     Tt  was  exhibited  in  Paris  in  1891 ,  where  it  ^f■c^\^■^d 
the  gold  me  and  also  the  universal  verdicr 

that   it   has   coucnea    tiie   high-water   mark   of   Christian   art   in 
America.     A  cast  of  this  bronze  is  in  the  Art  Museum.  Boston, 


J 
c 


X 

Interpretation 
Death    not  an  End  but  an  Incident 


' '  I  said,  Oh  my  God,  take  me  not  away  in  the  midst  of  my 
days. " 

Psalm. 

"My  soul,  an  alien  here,  hath  flown  to  nobler  wars.  " 

Dante. 

"I  do  not  wonder  at  what  men  suffer,  but  I  wonder  at 
what  they  lose.  We  may  see  how  good  rises  out  of  pain  and 
evil;  but  the  dead,  naked,  eyeless  loss,  what  good  comes  of  that? 
The  fruit  struck  to  the  earth  before  its  ripeness;  the  glowing 
life  and  goodly  purpose  dissolved  away  in  sudden  death;  the 
words  half  spoken,  choked  upon  the  lips  with  clay  forever; 
these  are  the  heaviest  mysteries  of  this  strange  world.  " 

RUSKIN. 

"Somewhere    is    comfort,    somewhere    faith, 

Though  thou  in  outer  dark  remain; 
One  sweet  sad  voice  ennobles  death, 

And  still,  for  eighteen  centuries  saith 
Softly, — 'Auf  Wiedersehen ! ' 

"If  earth  another  grave  must  bear. 

Yet  heaven  hath  won  a  sweeter  strain, 
And  something  whispers  my  despair, 

That,  from  an  orient  chamber  there, 
Floats  down, — 'Auf  Wiedersehen  I '  " 

Lowell. 

"The  body  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  like  the  cover  of  an  old 
book,  its  contents  torn  out,  and  stripped  of  its  leather  and  gilding, 
lies  here  food  for  worms;  yet  the  work  itself  shall  not  be  lost, 
for  it  will,  as  he  believes,  appear  once  more  in  a  new  and  more 
beautiful  edition,  corrected  and  amended  by  the  author. " 

Franklin's  Epitaph,  written  by  himself. 

"When  I  go  down  to  the  grave  I  can  say,  like  so  many 
others,  I  have  finished  my  day's  work;  but  I  cannot  say,  I  have 
finished  my  life ;  my  day's  work  will  begin  again  the  next  morn- 
ing, my  tomb  is  not  a  blind  alley;  it  is  a  thoroughfare.  It 
closes  in  the  twilight  to  open  in  the  dawn. " 

Victor  Hugo. 

(148) 


DEATH  NOT  AN  END,  BUT  AN  INCIDENT 

Pericles  once  said  to  the  young  men  of  Athens, 
"You  are  the  spring  of  our  year."  It  is  the  promise  of 
springtime  in  the  young  that  makes  their  death  seem  to 
us  tragical.  We  lose  not  only  what  they  are,  but  what 
they  might  become.  The  tragedy  lies  in  the  fact  that 
their  sun  has  gone  down  while  it  is  yet  day;  that  a 
beautiful  dawn  has  ended  in  sudden  eclipse.  It  is  this 
tragedy  in  the  life  of  Martin  Milmore  which  French's 
"Death  and  the  Sculptor"  embodies  and  commemo- 
rates. The  work  of  the  young  sculptor  is  abruptly 
broken  off,  when  death  calls  him  away,  and  must  remain 
incomplete. 

Browning  faced  the  same  tragedy  in  the  sudden 
death  of  Miss  Egerton-Smith,  who  was  staying  with  the 
Brownings  in  a  little  town  of  Switzerland.  One  evening 
he  arranged  for  a  mountain  climb  with  her  for  the  next 
day.  When,  early  the  next  morning,  he  came  to  keep 
his  appointment,  she  was  dead.  Tennyson,  had  a  like 
experience  in  the  death  of  Arthur  Hallam.  After  four 
years  of  intimate  friendship  with  the  poet  and  after  a  brief 
youth,  that  promised  much  for  the  future,  the  news  of 

(149) 


150     "DEATH  AND  THE  SCULPTOR"— FRENCH 

Hallam's  sudden  death  in  Vienna  stirred  the  poet  as 
nothing  had  ever  done  before. 

This  tragedy  all  three  artists  faced  and  battled  with, 
and  each  has  left  a  monument  of  his  conflict  in  a  work 
of  art;  French  in  his  bronze  memorial,  and  Tennyson 
and  Browning  in  their  noble  poems  "In  Memoriam" 
and  "La  Saisiaz."  They  have  compelled  the  mystery 
to  declare  itself.  All  three  made  the  same  discovery, 
and  all  three  have  expressed  in  common  the  two  great 
sidelights,  which  Christianity  throws  on  the  tragedy. 
The  two  Christian  words  which  they  have  made  clear  and 
concrete  for  us,  by  working  them  out  in  their  own  experi- 
ence, are  the  only  two  words  which  they  found  to  be  of 
any  comfort. 

Their  first  word  is  that  the  very  mystery  of  the 
tragedy  becomes  itself  a  source  of  comfort.  Not  that  the 
mystery  did  not  weigh  heavily  upon  them.  It  did. 
French  has  put  a  bewildered  look  on  the  young  sculptor's 
face,  as  he  turns  to  inquire  of  his  unasked  visitor,  why 
she  has  come  so  soon.  Browning  climbed  the  mountain, 
which  he  and  Miss  Smith  were  to  have  climbed  together, 
that  there  he,  by  himself  alone,  might  face  the  ultimate 
questions — "Does  the  soul  survive  the  body?  Is  there 
God's  self,  no  or  yes?"  It  took  all  his  noble  faith  and 
optimism  to  give  him  courage  to  face  them.  The  death 
of  Hallam  was  the  deepest  grief  of  Tennyson's  life,  and 


DEATH  A  MERE  INCIDENT  151 

its  turning  point.  It  was  to  him  the  baptism  of  fire. 
His  poem  begins  with  a  wail,  and  for  seventeen  years  he 
worked  on  "In  Memoriam"  before  he  came  out  into  his 
noble  conclusion. 

The  mystery  which  at  first  bewildered  all  three  men, 
at  last  became  a  comfort.  French,  by  the  delicate 
shading  of  the  death  angel's  face  with  folds  of  drapery, 
indicates  that  it  is  not  possible  to  know  why  she  has  come. 
But  this  is  not  the  only  mystery.  The  young  man  in  the 
statue  is  chiseling  the  sphinx,  the  personification  of 
mystery,  by  which  the  artist  suggests  that  the  mystery  of 
life  is  as  great  as  the  miystery  of  death.  Just  to  recognize 
that  mystery  is  on  every  hand  and  that  it  cannot  be 
penetrated  is  itself  a  comfort.  What  mystifies  us  in  this 
tragedy  is  the  fact  that  we  see  the  beginning  of  a  life,  but 
not  its  end.  We  are  like  dwellers  in  a  room  with  the 
blinds  down.  Our  inability  to  see  the  end  ought  to 
prevent  all  dogmatizing  as  to  what  the  end  is,  and  keep 
us  from  thinking  that  it  may  not  be  better  than  the 
beginning.     The  wise  man  knows  how  to  be  ignorant. 

In  like  manner  Job  found  comfort.  After  he  and  his 
friends  had  made  their  answers  to  his  problem,  it  still 
remained  an  open  wound.  Then  God  presents  to  Job 
indecipherable  mystery,  and  for  the  first  time  Job  is 
comforted.  Job  flings  at  God  one  riddle;  God  flings 
at  Job  a  hundred  riddles  and  Job  is  at  peace.    One  of  the 


152      "DEATH  AND  THE  SCULPTOR"— FRENCH 

greatest  contributions  ot  the  book  of  Job,  says  Chesterton, 
is  the  conviction  that,  if  we  are  to  be  reconciled  to  this 
strange  world,  it  must  be  as  something  divinely  mysterious. 

The  silence  of  the  book  of  Job  is  typical  of  the  whole 
Bible.  The  man  who  lay  on  the  bosom  of  the  Master  is  the 
most  modest  and  reticent  about  the  future,  "  It  doth  not 
yet  appear,"  says  John,  "what  we  shall  be."  One  of  the 
chief  elements  of  the  Bible's  greatness  lies  in  the  things 
it  does  not  tell  us.  It  is  a  silence  that  is  silver  and  a 
reticence  that  has  comfort  in  it.  Id  this  silence  Browning 
and  Tennyson  both  found  comfort,  and  by  it  were  driven 
to  a  reliance  on  the  simple  faith  of  the  heart  and  compelled 
"to  believe  where  they  cannot  prove."  It  is  then  and 
then  only  that  they  discover  Christianity's  greatest 
message  on  their  problem. 

Relying  thus  on  the  logic  of  the  heart  they  made  their 
second  discovery.  The  conviction  forced  itself  upon 
them  that  death,  is  not  an  end,  but  a  mere  incident;  that 
man  is  an  animal  by  accident  but  a  spirit  by  birthright, 
that  a  man's  engines  are  built  for  a  longer  voyage  than 
that  between  the  ports  of  life  and  death.  "In  Memo- 
riam"  began  with  a  wail  but  ended  in  the  song — "men  were 
not  born  to  die."  Browning  said  that  if  this  life  is  not 
the  school  time  for  a  larger  one,  then  all  is  chaos.  They 
refused  to  believe  that  God  would  educate  His  master- 
piece, man,  and  then  shoot  him  down.    They  believed 


DEATH  A  MERE  INCIDENT  iS3 

in  the  immortality  of  the  soul  as  John  Fiske  said  he  did 
"not  in  the  sense  in  which  I  believe  in  the  demonstrable 
truths  of  science,  but  as  a  supreme  act  of  faith  in  the 
reasonableness  of  God's  work." 

This  conviction  is  beautifully  embodied  in  the 
symbols  of  French's  statue.  In  it  death  comes  to  the 
young  man,  as  a  beautiful  woman,  to  indicate  that  she  is 
the  mother  of  another  life.  She  does  not  snatch  the 
chisel  from  him,  but  touches  his  hand  enticingly, 
calling  him  not  to  stop  work,  but  to  exchange  his  present 
work  for  something  better,  calling  him  home  as  a  mother 
calls  her  child.  She  carries  in  her  hand  a  cluster  of  lotus 
blossoms.  The  legend  is  that  no  one  ever  wants  to  leave 
the  land  where  the  lotus  blooms.  The  death  angel  calls 
him  to  a  land,  from  which  he  will  not  wish  to  return,  a 
land  where,  unhampered  by  limitations,  he  will  finish 
what  he  here  began.  The  artist  would  say  that  death  is 
not  much;  it  is  just  a  turn  in  the  road;  it  changes  no 
essential;  it  is  passing  from  one  room  into  a  larger;  it  is 
a  mere  incident  by  the  way. 

The  conviction,  which  thus  became  a  living  thing 
to  these  three  artists,  is  one  which  Christianity  alone 
enabled  men  to  hold.  Jesus  was  the  first  man  in  history 
to  make  the  absolute  continuity  of  life  seem  real.  There 
were  scattered  hopes  of  it  among  the  Jews.  To  the  Jew 
death  seemed  abnormal  and  irregular.     He  never  asso- 


154      "DEATH  AND  THE  SCULPTOR"— FRENCH 

dated  his  great  men  with  it.  Enoch  escaped  it.  Elijah 
passed  by  it.  Moses  had  a  hidden  grave.  The  Bible 
does  not  record  the  death  of  a  single  one  of  its  prophets. 
The  reason  suggested  by  Matheson  is,  that  in  the  thought 
of  the  Biblical  writers,  the  prophet  dwelt  with  things  that 
were  eternal,  and  they  felt  that  his  image  in  the  record 
ought  to  be  timeless  as  his  message  was  timeless.  The 
Jew,  like  the  Greek,  had  a  horror  of  death.  But  the  teach- 
ing of  the  continuity  of  life  is  not  found  in  Jewish  or 
pagan  literature  before  the  time  of  Christ.  Jesus  made 
it  the  cardinal  question  of  belief.  When  Martha  came  to 
Him  on  the  death  of  her  brother  and  was  not  satisfied 
with  a  far-off  resurrection  but  asked  for  some  present 
comfort.  He  said,  "  I  am  (now)  the  resurrection  and  the 
life.  He  that  believeth  on  me  shall  never  die;  believest 
thou  this?" 

What  was  it  Jesus  asked  her  to  believe?  It  was  this, 
that  Lazarus  was  not  mere  matter,  subject  to  decay,  but 
was  a  spirit  and  that  he  was  now  alive.  He  asked  her 
to  believe  in  the  spiritual  nature  of  man;  to  trust  the 
logic  of  the  heart  rather  than  the  logic  of  the  head;  to 
believe  in  the  absolute  continuity  of  life.  Jesus  brushed 
death  aside  as  a  mere  incident  in  an  unbroken  career. 
Lazarus  is  not  dead,  He  said,  but  living  and  close  at  hand. 
This  is  the  meaning  of  French's  lotus  blossoms,  which, 
Jesus  says,  death  always  brings  with  her  when  she  comes. 


DEATH  A  MERE  INCIDENT  155 

This  is  the  root  principle  of  all  faith.  It  is  the  one 
article  of  faith  Jesus  submitted  to  Martha.  If  this  is  not 
true,  then  there  is  nothing  worthy  to  be  true. 

The  man  who  believes  that  death  is  a  mere  incident, 
can  feel,  as  Victor  Hugo  said  he  felt,  like  a  bird  perched 
on  a  frail  bough,  who  feels  its  branch  give  way,  yet  keeps 
on  singing,  knowing  it  has  wings  for  flight.  Nothing 
discloses  the  rich  meaning  of  this  belief  like  the  death  of 
the  young,  as  French  and  Browning  and  Tennyson  dis- 
covered with  amazement.  With  this  belief  any  man 
may  say  with  one  of  these  poets,  what  no  man  without 
it  could  ever  say, — 

"At  noon  day  in  the  bustle  of  man's  work-time. 

Greet  the  unseen  with  a  cheer! 
Bid  him  forward,  breast  and  back 

As  either  should  be, 
'Strive  and  thrive!'  cry  speed, — ^fight  on. 

Forever,  there  as  here." 


XI 

The  Pursuit  of  Pleasure 

From  a  painting  by  Henneberg 


THE  PURSUIT  OF  PLEASURE 

By  Henneberg 
The       igi,3,  ,,  ^^.^  p.^^^^^  ^.^.^  j^^^^^^^  ^^^  ^ 

-  the  National  Gallery  at  Berlin.     It  was  painted  in   .868. 
js  seventy-s.x  inches  high  and  one  hundred  fifty-three  inches 
long.      The    reproduction   is    from    .    nh,.^..„..„u    u..    ,,       ^     ,. 
Photograph  Company,  N,  ^'^'° 


XI 

Interpretation 
Happiness  a  By-Product 


"Whosoever  shall  seek  to  gain  his  life  shall  lose  it,  but  who- 
soever shall  lose  his  life  shall  preserve  it.  " 

Jesus. 

"The  instinct  which  leads  us  to  compare  what  we  are  with 
what  we  might  be,  is  no  doubt  of  enormous  value,  but  like  every 
instinct,  it  is  the  source  of  greatest  danger.  I  remember  the 
day  and  the  very  spot  on  which  it  flashed  into  me  like  a  sudden 
burst  of  the  sun's  rays,  that  had  no  right  to  this  or  that,  to  so 
much  happiness.  Straightway  it  seemed  as  if  the  centre  of  a 
whole  system  of  dissatisfaction  were  removed.  Cease  the  trick 
of    contrast.  " 

Mark  Rutherford. 

"It's  no  in  titles  nor  in  rank; 
It's  no  in  wealth  like  Lon '  on  bank, 

To  purchase  peace  and  rest: 
It's  no  in  makin '  muckle  mair, 
It's  no  in  books,  it's  no  in  lear 

To  make  us  truly  blest; 
If  happiness  hae  not  her  seat 

An '  centre  in  the  breast 
We  may  be  wise,  or  rich,  or  great 

But  never  can  be  blest. 
Nae  treasures  nor  pleasures 

Could  make  us  happy  lang; 
The  heart  ay's  the  part  ay 

That  makes  us  right  or  wrang.  " 

Burns. 

"The  whim  we  have  of  happiness  is  somewhat  thus:  By 
certain  valuations  and  averages,  of  our  own  striking,  we  come 
upon  some  sort  of  average  terrestrial  lot ;  this  we  fancy  belongs 
to  us  by  nature  and  of  right.  It  is  simple  payment  of  our  wages. 
Only  such  overplus  as  there  may  be  do  we  account  Happiness, 
any  deficit  again  is  misery.  Now  consider  that  we  have  the 
valuation  of  our  deserts  ourselves,  and  what  a  fund  of  self- 
conceit  there  is  in  each  of  us, — do  you  wonder  that  the  balance 
should  so  often  dip  the  wrong  way?  The  fraction  of  life  can 
be  increased  in  value  not  so  much  by  increasing  your  numerator 
as  by  lessening  your  denominator.  " 

Carlylb, 

(162) 


HAPPINESS  A  BY-PRODUCT 

"How  far,  how  far,  how  far  is  it  from  here,  from 
here  to  happiness?"  This  is  the  song  which  the  car 
wheels  sang  to  James  Whitcomb  Riley's  little  friend 
"Jamsie."  It  is  the  song  perpetually  singing  itself  to 
human  hearts.  Whilst  many  would  not  openly  avow 
the  Epicurean  doctrine  that  pleasure  and  pain  are  the 
chief  motives  of  action,  or  defend  with  Herbert  Spencer 
the  position  that  happiness  is  a  legitimate  object  of 
endeavor,  yet,  whatever  meaning  each  may  for  him- 
self assign  to  it,  the  majority  make  happiness,  of 
some  sort,  their  chief  goal  of  direct  pursuit,  as  Henne- 
berg  represents  the  central  character  in  his  picture  as 
doing. 

The  striking  fact  is  that  all  such  seekers  after  happi- 
ness confess  that  their  search  is  fruitless,  and  that  the 
lees  of  life  to  them  are  bitter.  Long  would  be  the  recital 
of  the  names  of  famous  men  who  had  toiled  through  a 
long  life  and  at  last  confessed  with  bitterness  that  they 
had  caught  nothing.  The  verdict  of  the  book  of  Eccle- 
siastes  has  been  repeated  every  time  its  experiment  has 
been  tried.     "In  all  my  seventy-five  years,"  said  Goethe, 

(163) 


i64       "PURSUIT  OF  PLEASURE"— HENNEBERG 

"I  have  not  had  four  weeks  of  genuine  well-being." 
Burns  spoke  from  experience  when  he  sang, 

"  But  pleasures  are  like  poppies  spread 
You  seize  the  flower,  its  bloom  is  shed, 
Or  like  the  snow-fall  in  the  river, 
A  moment  white,  then  gone  forever." 

The  words  "pastime"  and  "diversion,"  used  to  describe 
our  pleasures,  bear  the  same  sad  testimony  to  the  fact 
that  men  have  not  found  happiness  in  themselves,  but 
must  seek  for  something  to  fill  up  the  time  and  divert  their 
thoughts  from  themselves.  The  search  for  pleasure  is 
largely  an  effort  to  avoid  self-reflection.  The  popularity 
of  Omar  Khayyam  and  his  pessimistic  poem  indicates 
how  wide-spread  is  the  sense  of  failure  in  the  pursuit  of 
happiness.  The  chief  consolation  which  the  amusement 
seeker,  suffering  from  ennui,  finds  in  the  Persian  poet 
is  the  discovery  that  other  failures  like  himself  are  so 
numerous. 

Failure  to  find  happiness  is  made  more  pronounced 
by  the  additional  truth,  that  such  failure  is  not  due  to  any 
lack  of  the  means,  which  are  used  to  secure  it.  Those 
who  have  the  most  of  such  means  are  the  least  happy. 
Among  all  the  characters  in  Mrs.  Wharton's  novel, 
"The  House  of  Mirth,"  the  only  two,  who  are  happy,  are  a 
plain  warm-hearted  woman,  whose  income  barely  keeps  her 


HAPPINESS  A  BY-PRODUCT  165 

from  actual  poverty,  and  the  wife  of  aworkingman,  whose 
husband,  baby,  and  tiny  "flat"  constitute  her  little 
world.  The  frantic  pursuit  of  pleasure  by  all  the  other 
characters  ends  in  empty  failure  or  in  misery. 

Such  failure  becomes  pathetic  when  it  is  remembered 
that  it  all  could  have  been  avoided  by  the  simple  dis- 
covery, that  happiness  is  a  by-product.  This  is  the  first 
and  chief  thing  to  be  said  about  happiness.  It  ought  not 
to  take  a  long  experience  to  reveal  the  truth,  that  pleasure 
cannot  be  sought  directly  with  success.  Johnson  wrote 
his  "Rasselas"  with  the  sole  purpose  of  demonstrating 
the  truth  of  this  statement.  This  is  the  truth  which 
Henneberg  has  told  with  cruel  bluntness  in  his  picture, 
"The  Pursuit  of  Pleasure."  The  chief  figure  in  the 
picture  is  accompanied  in  his  mad  haste,  not  by  happiness, 
but  by  an  image  of  death.  His  pursuit  contains  the 
seeds  of  its  own  defeat.  He  is  after  an  ever-receding 
figure  riding  on  a  bubble,  that  is  sure  to  burst.  The 
bridge,  over  which  he  dashes,  ends  in  a  narrow  plank, 
from  which  the  fall  of  his  horse  will  be  inevitable.  By 
the  flowers  which  he  tramples  down;  by  the  virtuous 
and  prostrate  woman  on  whom  he  treads,  and  by  the 
money  which  is  flung  from  his  hand  into  the  abyss,  the 
artist  says,  that  the  man  has  passed  by  and  wasted  the 
very  means,  which  produce  happiness,  if  he  had  only 
known  it. 


1 66       "PURSUIT  OF  PLEASURE"— HENNEBERG 

The  bitter  irony  of  this  picture  was  felt  by  the 
followers  of  the  Epicurean  philosophy  in  the  beginning, 
and  by  its  devotees  ever  since.  Epicureanism  assumed  that 
a  man  was  a  bundle  of  natural  appetites  and  passions, 
and  that  the  end  of  life  is  their  gratification.  It  ended 
by  teaching  that  the  thing  most  desirable  was  the  "divine 
apathy,"  indifference  to  all  desires.  The  pursuit  of 
pleasure  had  completed  the  circle  and  defeated  itself. 
It  is  the  same  blunder  made  by  the  miser,  who  confuses 
happiness  with  the  means  of  happiness.  He  begins  by 
seeking  for  money  for  the  pleasure  it  procures.  He  ends 
by  sacrificing  every  pleasure  in  order  to  secure  money, 
and  it  is  a  sad  commentary  on  his  error  that  the  words 
"miser"  and  "miserable"  are  from  the  same  root. 

The  fact  is  that  happiness  is  a  by-product  of  other 
and  higher  causes  than  itself.  This  is  the  meaning 
of  the  oft-repeated  paradox  of  Jesus,  which  He  said  had 
a  universal  application,  "whosoever  shall  seek  to  gain 
his  life,  shall  lose  it,  but  whosoever  shall  lose  his  life  shall 
gain  it."  Jesus  does  not  say  it  is  wrong  to  desire  happi- 
ness, for  He  came.  He  said,  to  give  men  joy.  What  He 
does  say  is,  that  it  is  wrong  to  seek  it,  and  not  only  wrong, 
but  futile.  That  the  way  to  get  it,  is  to  lose  oneself  in 
devotion  to  other  and  unselfish  ends,  and  happiness  will 
come  incidentally.  Make  pleasure  the  object  of  pursuit 
and  it  is  never  attained. 


HAPPINESS  A  BY-PRODUCT  167 

Jesus'  position,  Tolstoi  found  to  be  literally  true. 
He  lived  for  years  among  an  exclusive,  pleasure-loving, 
royal  company  in  St.  Petersburg.  He  became  depressed 
when  he  awoke  to  the  fact,  that  they  were  all  wretchedly 
unhappy.  Then  he  went  to  his  farm  and  noticed  that 
the  plain  people  of  the  countryside  were  uniformly  happy. 
He  tried  to  discover  the  reason  for  this  difference.  The 
explanation  he  gave  himself  was,  that  the  people  of  St. 
Petersburg  were  in  mad  pursuit  of  pleasure  for  its  own 
sake,  and  the  country  folk  were  absorbed  in  mutual  serv- 
ice. He  had  discovered  that  happiness  was  a  by-prod- 
uct, as  Jesus  had  said.  He  pathetically  adds  that, 
what  it  took  him  years  to  discover,  he  might  have  learned 
easily,  if  he  had  had  the  good  sense  to  open  the  pages  of 
the  New  Testament. 

An  external  unselfish  end  in  life  is  the  cause,  from 
which  happiness  comes  as  an  inevitable  result.  William 
De  Witt  Hyde  thus  illustrates  the  fatal  error  of  the  Epicu- 
rean pleasure-seeker.  "  Build  a  good  fire  and  warm  your . 
room  and  the  mercury  in  the  thermometer  will  rise.  The 
cause  produces  the  eflFect.  But  it  does  not  follow  that 
because  you  raise  the  mercury  in  the  thermometer  by 
breathing  on  the  bulb,  or  by  holding  it  in  your  hand,  that 
the  fire  will  burn  or  the  room  be  warmed.  The  Epicurean 
goes  around  with  a  clincal  thermometer  under  his  tongue 
all  the  time. "     Sooner  or  later  he  must  see  that  there  is  no 


i68      "PURSUIT  OF  PLEASURE"— HENNEBERG 

escape  from  the  principle,  stated  by  Jesus,  and  embodied  in 
Henneberg's  picture,  that  happiness  comes  only  as  a 
by-product.  It  can  be  found  only  by  the  practice  of 
what  Lowell  calls  the  "theory  of  the  unsought."  And 
what  Lowell  says,  in  illustration  of  his  theory,  about  his 
pursuit  of  the  muse,  is  the  fundamental  fact  about  happi- 
ness. 

"Coy  Hebe  flies  from  those  who  woo. 

And  shuns  the  hands  would  seize  upon  her; 
Follow  thy  life,  and  she  will  sue 
To  pour  for  thee  the  cup  of  honor." 


XII 

Christ  in  Gethsemane 

From  a  painting  by  Heinrich  Hofmann 


CHRIST  IN  GETHSEMANK 
By  Heinrich  Hofm.p., 


^he  scene  of  Tesu<;  in  r 

—  -e  „„,  „,  .„.;,;;*,:=;;;  7^-  --  s„«„.n,  ,J 

""«'■  upon  us  ,he  sordid  brutalities  .l!"  ""'"  ""  ""  "^l"  to 
"i^  Pas^ion  unless  he  ™.e  „  '  e^  Zl'  """''  "'"°"  ^^^  '» 
"""erlies  the  physical  facts  ! ,'"""  ^"'""•=1  reality,  which 
■hemselves  only  ,,,,,,.„^  \  ^'■J  ""-■=  »'  sufl-ering  are  i„ 
"nd  why  He  suffered.  To  paint 7h  """"'""  '"'o  Jesus  was 
-Piri.ua,  insight  and  synt^at^  whlc"!  T'  """^  ''^"'«= 
•--ought  they  possessed  sufficienMvT  "  ""'*  """  "»' 

Hunt  Shrank  from  i,    and  oil!  "'"  "■'  •^''•-     H"taan 

P'Cture  has  shown  the  same  reserv!      .  ""    ""    '*"''«">ane 

a'-Pted  to  represent  on y  1      ."    '°°'' ^■"'^"'""-     «'"« 

^'-■■'--"-worthii;hi::;e:rr,i:i:— :-- 


I 

I 


XII 

Interpretation 
The  Heroism  of    Jesus 


"And  He  went  a  little  further  and  fell  on  his  face  and 
prayed,  saying,  O  my  Father,  if  it  be  possible,  let  this  cup  pass 
away  from  me.  " 

Matthew. 

"The  so-called  heroes  of  the  world  have  conquered  by 
shedding  other  men's  blood ;  but  this  man  by  shedding  his  own.  " 

H.    B.    RiDGAWAY. 

"Gethsemane  ought  ever  to  be  a  veiled  Holy  of  Holies,  to 
be  visited,  if  at  all,  only  at  moments  when  we  can  look  with 
purified  eyes  and  allow  the  meaning  of  our  Saviour  in  His 
Passion  to  steal  softly  into  our  minds. " 

A.  M.   Fairbairn. 

"Into  the  woods  my  Master  went. 
Clean  forspent,  forspent, 

Into  the  woods  my  Master  came, 

Forspent  with  love  and  shame. 
But  the  olives  they  were  not  blind  to  him, 
The  little  gray  leaves  were  kind  to  him; 
The  thorn-tree  had  a  mind  to  him 

When  into  the  woods  he  came. 

"Out  of  the  woods  my  Master  went, 
And  He  was  well  content. 

Out  of  the  woods  my  Master  came, 
Content  with  death  and  shame. 
When  Death  and  Shame  would  woo  Him  last, 
From  under  the  trees  they  drew  Him  last ; 
'Twas  on  a  tree  they  slew  Him — last. 
When  out  of  the  woods  He  came.  " 

Sidney  Lanier. 

"To  stand,  with  a  smile  upon  your  face,  against  a  stake 
from  which  you  cannot  get  away, — that,  no  doubt,  is  heroic. 
True  glory  is  resignation  to  the  inevitable.  But  to  stand  un- 
chained, with  perfect  liberty  to  go  away,  held  only  by  the  higher 
claims  of  duty,  and  let  the  fire  creep  up  to  the  heart, — this  is 
heroism. 

F.  W.  Robertson. 


(174) 


THE  HEROISM  OF  JESUS 

To  the  proud  and  imperious  Roman  and  to  the  early 
pagan  of  Teutonic  Europe,  Jesus  seemed  unheroic  and 
unworthy  of  worship.  "Do  you  know  that  Thor  chal- 
lenged your  white  Christ,  and  he  refused  to  fight?"  was  a 
taunt  which  an  Icelander  hurled  at  a  Christian.  To  the 
pagan,  submission  to  an  enemy  was  weakness.  To  them 
a  scene  like  that  in  Gethsemane  was  an  obstacle,  not  an 
attraction.  The  fact  must  be  granted  that  in  the  garden, 
Jesus  is  crushed  with  a  strange  weakness. 

When  one  compares  Jesus  in  Gethsemane  facing 
death,  with  Socrates  in  his  cell  facing  death,  Jesus  suffers 
from  the  comparison,  if  you  look  no  deeper  than  the  ex- 
ternal facts.  Socrates  took  his  cup  quite  "readily  and 
cheerfully. "  Jesus  prayed  in  an  agony  to  be  delivered  from 
His.  In  the  prison  cell  at  Athens,  Socrates  met  his  last  trial 
with  calm  and  good  cheer.  In  Gethsemane  there  was  the 
sweat  of  blood,  the  broken  prayer,  the  falling  of  the  face, 
the  over-mastering  depression,  the  terrible  consternation  of 
spirit.  "  Ringed  round  with  sorrow, "  is  the  term  the  evan- 
gelist uses.  In  view  of  this  contrast  how  can  Jesus  be  adored 
as  the  supreme  Man?    Can  it  be  true  that  He  does  not 

(175) 


r76       "CHRIST  IN  GETHSEMANE"— HOFMANN 

deserve  the  place  given  Him  in  Christian  thought?  Was 
He  less  brave  than  Socrates? 

Such  questions  are  startling,  but  helpful,  for  they 
compel  one  to  look  for  the  cause  of  the  contrast  between 
the  two  men.  When  one  looks  for  such  a  cause,  he  sees 
that  any  comparison  between  the  cup  of  hemlock  and  the 
cup  pressed  to  Jesus'  lips,  is  unfair  and  out  of  place,  be- 
cause the  problems  faced  by  the  two  men  are  not  in  the 
same  class.  With  Socrates  it  was  the  question  merely 
of  his  own  death.  With  Jesus  it  was  the  problem  of  sin 
and  its  forgiveness.  He  did  not  fear  death.  He  had  not 
ceased  to  speak  about  it  familiarly,  since  He  first  mentioned 
it  at  Caesarea  Philippi.  Nor  did  He  fear  sin  for  Himself. 
"Conscience  makes  a  coward  only  where  there  is  guilt." 
He  was  not  punished  for  His  own  sin,  or  any  other  man's 
sin.  It  would  be  both  immoral  and  impossible  for  any 
man  to  be  punished  for  another's  sin.  He  was  not 
punished  for  sin.  He  suffered  for  it.  It  was  the  problem 
of  sin,  as  He  so  often  said,  that  caused  His  mysterious 
horror. 

The  fact  of  sin  tortured  Him,  because  He,  more  than 
any  other  man  who  ever  lived,  knew  the  meaning  of  sin. 
Dr.  Fairbairn  truly  says,  that  the  holier  a  man  is,  the  more 
perfectly  does  he  understand  sin;  the  more  wicked  he  is, 
the  less.  The  prodigal  could  not  see  into  the  depravity 
and  defilement  of  the  "far  country,"  as  his  father  did. 


THE  HEROISM  OF  JESUS  177 

Jesus'  agony  was  due  in  part  to  His  intuitive,  sensitive 
knowledge  of  the  nature  of  sin.  It  is  this  truth  for  which 
Genthsemane  stands  first  of  all.  The  more  Jesus  loved 
man,  the  more  the  sin,  that  was  ruining  the  loved  man, 
tore  His  bleeding  heart. 

Jesus'  wise  and  tender  heart  agonized,  not  only  over 
sin,  as  a  fact,  but  also  over  sin  as  a  problem.  It  was  the 
thought  that  in  putting  Him  to  death  men  were  guilty 
of  an  act  of  wickedness,  from  which  He  was  helpless  to 
save  them.  They  could  kill  Him  if  they  would,  but  if 
they  did,  they  murdered  their  own  souls.  His  unselfish 
purpose  to  save,  seemed  to  have  hopelessly  failed.  His 
own  goodness  seemed  to  have  intensified  the  forces  of 
evil. 

The  problem  that  tightened  at  His  heart  was  how 
could  forgiveness  be  found  for  such  sin.  Forgiveness 
with  men  is  a  simple  matter;  it  is  to  forget  their  injuries. 
With  God,  who  is  always  willing  to  forgive,  and  who  alone 
can  truly  forgive,  forgiveness  is  a  profound  problem. 
The  problem  is  how  to  save  men  from  sin,  and  at  the  same 
time  preserve  the  ethical  order  of  the  moral  world,  which 
must  condemn  them  for  it.  The  thing  over  which  Jesus 
agonized  was  the  ultimate  relation  of  the  three  greatest 
facts  of  life, — "the  greatest  thing  in  God,  which  is  His 
love;  the  strongest  thing  in  the  universe,  which  is  law; 
and   the   darkest   thing  in   man,  which   is   sin."     How 


178       "CHRIST  IN  GETHSEMANE"— HOFMANN 

intense  was  His  agony  only  became  manifest  when  "the 
touch  of  a  Roman  spear  showed  that  He  had  died  of  a 
broken  heart." 

The  world  has  not  been  mistaken  in  looking  on  Jesus, 
alone  in  Gethsemane,  as  its  greatest  hero.  His  heroism 
lies  in  this  lonely  struggle  over  men's  deepest  needs  and 
problems.  The  record  says,  "He  went  a  little  further," 
— ^went  into  the  night  beyond  human  help  and  pity,  to 
endure  "the  loneliness  of  the  hero  and  the  thinker." 
The  acceptance  of  loneliness  is  the  necessary  condition 
of  all  rare  achievement.  Lowell,  in  his  three  poems  on 
"Prometheus"  and  "Cromwell"  and  "Columbus"  makes 
the  lonely  conflicts  in  their  souls  over  the  problems  of 
human  freedom  and  progress,  to  be  the  chief  element  in 
their  heroism. 

The  chief  point  of  Hofmann's  picture  is  the  em- 
phasis he  lays  on  the  loneliness  of  Jesus.  "The  first 
law  of  all  heroism  is  the  courage  to  go  on  when  others 
are  left  behind."  The  artist  wisely  has  given  to  his  Hero 
a  regal  aspect  as  of  an  uncrowned  King,  for  so  He  was. 
The  light,  which  in  the  picture,  streams  upon  Him,  and 
the  halo  about  His  head,  is  the  artist's  way  of  saying  what 
Luke  says,  that  an  angel  from  Heaven  strengthened  Him. 
It  was  his  filial  trust  and  His  Knowledge  of  His  Father's 
approval,  which  never  deserted  Him  through  it  all.  With 
His  Father's  approval  on    His  heroic  struggle,  He  came 


THE  HEROISM  OF  JESUS  179 

out  from  !he  olive  grove  "well  content  with  death  and 
shame"  and  walked  henceforth  through  his  remaining 
passion  with  the  mien  of  a  conqueror. 

The  sight  of  the  solitary  sufferer  in  Gethsemane  has 
been  one  of  the  mightiest  redemptive  forces  in  human 
life.  It  made  sin  seem  a  new  thing.  The  sin  that  caused 
such  suffering  could  not  henceforth  be  looked  upon  lightly. 
Gethsemane  is  the  best  corrective  of  the  theory  that  sin 
is  only  "involuntary  error,"  Men  become  conscious  of 
sin,  as  never  before,  when  they  look  at  it  through  the  eyes 
of  the  stainless  Christ.  Such  a  sight  supplies  the  strongest 
motive  to  keep  men  from  sin.  Show  a  man  the  suffering 
his  sin  imposes  on  an  innocent  wife  or  child,  and  this 
motive  operates,  when  all  others  have  failed. 

Gethsemane  is  at  once  a  man's  salvation  from  sin,  and 
his  punishment  for  it.  For  one  of  the  worst  punishments 
of  sin  is  to  look  on  the  suffering  we  have  caused  the  in- 
nocent. "The  rivers  of  the  Inferno,"  says  Dante,  "are 
made  up  of  the  tears  we  have  caused  others  to  shed. "  It  is 
these  two  effects  which  Newman,  in  his  "  Dream  of  Geron- 
tius,"  says  the  sight  of  the  Master  in  the  future  world, 
produces. 

"That  sight  of  the  Most  Fair 
Will  gladden  thee,  but  it  will  pierce  thee,  too. 
**********     though 
Now  sinless,  thou  wilt  feel  that  thou  hast  sinn'd 


i8o       "CHRIST  IN  GETHSEMANE"— HOFMANN 

As  never  thou  didst  feel;  and  wilt  desire 
To  slink  away,  and  hide  thee  from  His  sight: 
And  yet  wilt  have  a  longing  aye  to  dwell 
Within  the  beauty  of  His  countenance. 
And  these  two  pains,  so  counter  and  so  keen, — 
The  longing  for  Him,  when  thou  seest  Him  not; 
The  shame  of  self  at  thought  of  seeing  Him, — 
Will  be  thy  veriest,  sharpest  purgatory." 

Gethsemane  is  a  challenge  to  all  men  to  be  heroic. 
The  trial  question  it  puts  to  every  man  is  whether  he  will 
follow  Jesus  in  His  Gethsemane.  "You  cannot,"  says 
Ruskin,  "save  men  from  death  but  by  facing  it  for  them, 
nor  from  sin  but  by  resisting  it  for  them.  That  is  the 
final  doctrine,  the  inevitable  one,  not  of  Christianity  only, 
but  of  all  heroic  faith;  and  the  first  trial  question  of  a 
true  soul  to  itself  must  always  be, — Have  I  a  religion, 
have  I  a  country,  have  I  a  love  that  I  am  ready  to  die 
for?" 

This  is  the  root  of  heroism.  They  alone  who 
grasp  it  can  be  heroes.  Jesus  left  eight  of  His  disciples 
at  the  outer  gate  of  the  olive  garden.  A  little  later  He 
parted  from  Peter  and  James  and  John,  who  are  seen  in 
the  background  of  Hofmann's  picture.  He  is  left  alone. 
Who  can  follow  in  His  train?  Is  no  one  able  to  watch 
with  Him  in  His  lonely  struggle?  Who  can  follow  now 
in  His  train?    When  Charles  Kingsley  was  hissed  at  a 


THE  HEROISM  OF  JESUS  i8i 

workingmen's  meeting  by  those  to  whom  his  heart  went 
out,  lie  burst  into  tears.  Then  he  tramped  off  twenty 
miles  through  the  night,  and  at  day-break  wrote  his  poem, 
"The  Three  Fishers,"  It  was  Kingsley's  Gethsemane. 
No  man  can  understand  Jesus  in  the  olive  garden,  and 
like  Jesus,  no  man  can  be  a  hero  or  a  Saviour  until  he 
has  a  Gethsemane  of  his  own. 


XIII 
"Sic  Transit  Gloria  Mundi" 

From  a  painting  by  George  Frederick  Watts 


"SIC   TRANSIT    GLORIA    MTrNDT" 
By  George  F.  WatU 

This  picture  was  suggested  to  the  artist  by  the  Queen  of 
Roumania,  "Carman  Sylva."  During  a  visit  to  his  studio  she 
quoted  the  old  German  motto,  "What  I  spent,  I  had;  what  I 
saved,  I  lost;  what  I  gave,  I  have."  The  picture  is  a  concrete 
expression  in  form  and  color  of  this  motto.  "Watts  has  inscribed 
it  on  the  dark  curtain,  that  hangs  behind  the  shrouded  figure. 
The  picture  is  three  feet  four  inches  high,  and  si.t  feet  eight  inches 
long.  It  was  painted  in  1892,  and  in  1897  was  presented  by 
Watts  to  the  Tate  Gallery,  London,  where  it  now  is. 


■ 

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wKmm^^^f            ^^1 

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■^^^Hb^  .                  ^H 

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|^^^^^^P€C^H^^^  1       ^1 

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^^^Bi^^^^Bi^^^  fe-                              ^^H 

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^^^^^k'                             ^^ 

^^^^^^^s^l 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^■k  ^^L:^!^  •                                                          ^^^^^^^H 

^^1 

^^^^^^^^^^^^■^^^^^l^^^^^H 

m 

XIII 

Interpretation 
A  Disappointed  Man 


"Blessed  are  they  that  mourn,  for  they  shall  be  comforted; 
that  is,  strengthened.  " 

Jesus. 

"In  the  crown  of  thorns  and  in  the  rod  of  reed,  was  fore- 
shown the  everlasting  truth  of  the  Christian  Ages, — that  all  glory 
was  to  be  begun  in  suffering,  and  all  power  in  humility. " 

RUSKIN. 

"Deem  not  that  they  are  blest  alone 
Whose  days  a  peaceful  tenor  keep ; 
The  God  who  loves  our  race  has  shown 
A  blessing  for  the  eyes  that  weep. " 

"Moab  hath  been  at  ease  from  his  youth,  and  he  hath 
settled  on  his  lees,  and  hath  not  been  emptied  from  vessel  to 
vessel,  therefore  his  taste  remaineth  in  him,  and  his  scent  is  not 
changed. " 

Jeremiah. 

"It  is  indeed  a  remarkable  fact  that  sufferings  and  hard- 
ships do  not  as  a  rule  abate  the  love  of  life ;  they  seem,  on  the 
contrary,  usually  to  give  to  it  a  keener  zest ;  and  the  sovereign 
source  of  melancholy  is  repletion.  Need  and  struggle  are  what 
excite  and  inspire.  Our  hour  of  triumph  is  what  brings  the 
yoid. " 

William  James. 

"O  Friend,  we  never  choose  the  better  part 
Until  we  set  the  cross  up  in  our  heart. 
I  know  I  cannot  live  until  I  die 
Till  I  am  nailed  upon  it,  wild  and  high. 
And  sleep  in  the  tomb  for  a  full  three  days,  dead — 
With  angels  at  the  feet  and  at  the  head; 
But  there  in  a  great  brightness  I  shall  rise 
To  walk  with  stiller  feet  below  the  skies. " 

Markham. 


(i88) 


A  DISAPPOINTED  MAN 

In  the  whole  of  the  "Divine  Comedy,"  Dante  smiles 
but  once.  When  in  the  sphere  of  the  Fixed  Stars,  at  the 
suggestion  of  Beatrice,  he  looked  downwards,  he  smiled 
at  the  mean  appearance  of  our  globe,  "the  little  threshing 
floor"  he  calls  it,  whose  possession  men  so  ferociously 
dispute.  A  similar  smile  is  caused  by  Watts'  picture. 
For  the  prospective,  which  Dante's  position  gave  him, 
is  furnished  in  the  picture  by  the  touch  of  Death.  In 
the  picture  the  artist  has  not  painted  a  corpse.  It  is 
the  effect  on  life,  of  the  touch  of  death,  which  he  has 
painted.  Under  its  magic  touch  the  things  for  which 
the  man  had  so  passionately  striven  appear  now  as  they 
are,  and  they  seem  small.  He  is  a  disappointed  man. 
For  this  reason,  the  artist  has  put  faded  tints  on  the  once 
brilliant   accessories. 

The  relics  of  the  man's  life,  which  are  in  the 
foreground,  tells  us  who  and  what  the  man  was.  The 
ermine  robe  on  the  left  indicates  that  he  inherited  a  noble 
name.  The  laurel  wreath  on  the  right  shows  that  he 
won  fame,  as  well  as  inherited  it.  The  spear,  the  gauntlet, 
and  the  golden  shield,  tell  us  that  he  won  his  fame  in  war. 

(189) 


I90      "SIC  TRANSIT  GLORIA  MUNDI"— WATTS 

The  peacock  feathers  show  his  love  of  the  pleasures  of 
life  and  his  taste  for  its  decorations.  The  lute  speaks 
of  his  musical  tastes.  The  book  says  he  was  not  a 
stranger  to  literature.  The  dark  robe  of  the  pilgrim  with 
its  cockle-shell,  points  to  the  fact  that  he  had  his  mystic 
religious  side,  a  presentiment  that,  after  all,  mere  fame 
was  hollow.  He  was  a  man  of  culture  and  success. 
There  he  lies  on  the  bier,  covered  by  the  pearl-grey  shroud, 
which  is  the  largest  and  most  conspicuous  object  on  the 
canvas.  It  looms  large  and  overshadows  all  his  achieve- 
ments. 

He  is  now  a  disappointed  man.  The  artist  has  indi- 
cated this  in  the  position  of  the  head.  The  face  is  not 
level  in  repose,  but  thrown  back  in  question  and  eager- 
ness. With  head  thrown  back  he  is  still  craving  and 
pursuing.  He  is  not  much  in  himself.  He  has  nothing 
which  can  resist  the  solvent  touch  of  death.  Why  is  he 
disappointed?  Why  has  he  now  only  poverty?  Why 
is  he  not  at  rest?  It  is  because  he  lacks  now  what  he 
lacked  in  life.  Amid  all  the  glorious  symbols  of  his  life 
there  is  no  symbol  of  a  cross.  There  is  nothing  to  indi- 
cate that  he  was  anything  but  a  self-seeker,  an  Epicurean, 
not  of  the  vulgar  sort,  but  an  Epicurean  just  the  same. 
In  life  he  had  given  little  in  service,  and  now  he  has  little. 
"There  was  plenty  of  culture,  but  what  of  the  cross?  There 
is  the  crown  of  laurel.     Where  is  the  crown  of  thorns?" 


A  DISAPPOINTED  MAN  191 

With  all  the  man's  gifts  and  achievements  he  had 
not  learned  the  Christian  commonplace,  that  the  path- 
way to  peace  and  real  riches,  is  the  way  of  the  cross. 
The  word  cross  has  acquired  two  distinct  meanings  which 
have  become  common.  It  has  become  the  symbol  of 
what  Christ  did  for  men,  an  expression  of  what  is  most 
precious  in  the  spiritual  life.  As  such  it  is  a  joy  and 
inspiration.  It  is  the  sign  of  the  gentleness  of  God.  This 
meaning  is  expressed  in  Christian  song. 

"Beneath  the  cross  of  Jesus 
I  fain  would  take  my  stand, 
The  shadow  of  a  mighty  rock 
Within    a   weary   land." 

The  second  meaning  it  has  acquired  is,  that  the  cross  is  a 
test,  a  burden,  a  conflict,  a  somber  thing,  which  one  is 
asked  to  assume,  but  if  assumed  at  all  is  done  reluctantly. 
This  also  finds  expression  in  Christian  song. 

"Thou  say'st.  Take  up  thy  cross, 
O  man,  and  follow  me; 
The  night  is  black,  the  feet  are  slake 
Yet  we  would  follow  Thee.'  " 

There  is  a  third  meaning  which  Christianity  has  put  into 
the  word,  but  which  is  understood  as  yet  only  by  the 
few,  but  destined  in  the  future  to  be  one  of  the  chief  facts 


192      "SIC  TRANSIT  GLORIA  MUNDI "—WATTS 

fn  Christian  experience,  symbolized  by  the  cross.  The 
fact  referred  to  is,  that  every  cross  willingly  borne  is 
forthwith  transmuted  into  joy;  is,  indeed,  the  only  means 
of  securing  the  joy  which  is  the  real  riches.  Goethe 
called  Christianity  the  "deification  of  sorrow."  But 
the  great  German  never  entered  the  New  Testament's 
sanctuary  of  sorrow  enough  to  understand  its  teaching, 
that  sorrov/  and  joy  were  not  enemies,  but  friends;  or 
to  see  that  it  emphasized  sorrow  only  as  a  means  of  the 
truest  joy.  The  New  Testament  is  constantly  speaking 
of  tribulation  and  triumph ;  of  suffering  and  the  glory  that 
follows.  It  weds  the  two  ideas  of  cross-bearing  and  true 
joy,  which  Goethe,  and  the  man  in  Watts'  picture  thought 
were  incompatible,  but  which  are,  in  fact,  riveted  together 
as  cause  and  effect. 

Watts'  picture  says  that  human  experience  verifies 
the  New  Testament  teaching,  for  the  man  in  the  picture 
vindicates  its  truth  by  showing  the  effect  of  its  absence 
in  his  life.  The  happy  people  in  life  are  not  such  as  he, 
but  those  who  are  crucified  with  Christ.  This  is  a  spiritual 
principle  exemplified  in  human  life  every  day  and  hour; 
a  principle  so  vital  and  so  apparent,  that  it  is  a  matter 
of  surprise  that  the  number  of  men,  like  the  one  in  Watts' 
picture,  who  do  not  see  it,  is  so  large.  Jesus  said  that 
those  that  mourn  are  to  be  accounted  happy,  for  by 
means    of   their   cross-bearing   they   are   made   strong. 


A  DISAPPOINTED  MAN  193 

"When  pain  ends  gain  ends,  too."  The  men  least 
disappointed  are  the  cross  bearers. 

Was  Paul  an  anxious,  depressed,  unhappy  man? 
Was  he  not  exultantly  glad  in  all  that  he  endured?  It  is 
unexpected  but  not  surprising,  that  the  best  hymns  of 
hope  and  courage  have  been  written  by  great  sufferers, 
Baxter,  Miss  Elliott,  Miss  Havergal  and  Mrs.  Browning. 
The  latter  in  her  poem,  "The  Musical  Instrument,"  has 
told  us  why  this  is  so.  The  great  god  Pan  goes  down  to 
the  river  and  rends  and  wounds  the  reeds  and  golden 
lilies.  He  tears  out  a  reed  from  the  deep  cool  bed  of  the 
river.  He  hacks  and  hews  it,  draws  out  its  pith  like  the 
heart  of  a  man,  notches  the  poor  dry  empty  thing  with 
holes,  and  thus  from  it  makes  music.  We  may  mourn 
for  the  reed  that  will  grow  nevermore  with  the  reeds  in 
the  river,  yet  this  is  the  only  way  since  the  world  began, 
that  sweet  music  can  be  made. 

Everything  which  is  noblest  in  human  character  has 
its  roots  in  the  mystery  of  pain.  It  is  related  of  a  famous 
naturalist  that  one  day  he  was  studying  a  cocoon,  in  which 
a  butterfly  was  struggling  to  be  free.  He  heard  it  beat- 
ing against  the  sides  of  its  little  prison.  His  heart  pitied 
the  helpless  creature,  so  with  a  tiny  lancet  he  cut  away  the 
fragile  walls  and  released  the  captive.  To  his  amazement 
it  lay  struggling  upon  the  table,  and  never  was  able  to  fly. 
In  the  place  of  the  gorgeously  colored  wings  he  had 

13 


194        "SIC  TRANSIT  GLORIA  MUNDI"— WATT 

expected  to  see,  were  weak,  shriveled  members.  The 
obstacle  had  been  removed  before  the  butterfly  had  been 
made  sufficiently  strong,  through  struggle,  to  be  ready  for 
its  glorious  flight  into  the  sunshine  among  the  flowers. 
The  naturalist's  act  was  mistaken  kindness. 

What  Christianity  did  was  not  to  deify  sorrow  or 
hardship  as  an  end  in  itself,  but  it  took  this  great  natural 
law  and  extended  its  application  to  the  spiritual  world, 
and  demonstrated  that  cross-bearing  is  God's  minister  to 
manhood.  Its  unique  message  is  that  life  is  glorious,  not 
in  spite  of  the  crosses,  but  is  glorious  because  of  them.  It  is 
just  as  true  in  the  spiritual  world  as  it  is  in  the  natural  world, 
that  "all  sunshine  makes  the  desert."  The  heart  of  the  man 
in  the  picture  is  a  desert  land  because  he  had  been  pamper- 
ed by  too  much  sunshine.  He  lacks  wings  in  his  spiritual 
outfit,  because  he  refused  to  use  the  means  of  their  develop- 
ment. He  who  violates  this  natural  law  is  certain  to  be  a 
disappointed  man.  This  is  what  Watts' picture  says.  If 
the  man  in  the  picture  could  now  speak,  he  would  say  to 
his  fellows  what  indeed  Watts'  picture  of  him  does  say, — 

"Then  welcome  each  rebuff, 
That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough. 
Each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit,  nor  stand,  but  go; 
Be  our  joys  three-parts  pain; 
Strive  and  hold  cheap  the  strain: 
Learn,    nor    account  the    pang;  dare,   never  grudge 
the  throe." 


XIV 
Christ    and  The  Fishermen 

From  a  painting  by  Ernst  Zimmermann 


CHRISr  ATO  THE  FISHERMEN 
By  Ernsi  Zim^.rmann 

snr  Hanfseaengl,  New  York 


XIV 

Interpretation 
They  Who  Trust  us  Educate  us 


"He  needed  not  that  any  should  bear  witness  concerning 
man,  for  He  himself  knew  what  was  in  man.  " 


John. 


"Be  noble!  and  the  nobleness  that  lies 
In  other  men,  sleeping,  but  never  dead, 
Will  rise  in  majesty  to  meet  thine  own.  " 

Lowell. 

"It  is  the  merit  and  preservation  of  friendship,  that  it  takes 
place  on  a  level  higher  than  the  actual  characters  of  the  parties 
would  seem  to  warrant. " 

Thoreau. 

"Love  is  not  blind.  The  nearer  the  intimacy,  the  more 
cuttingly  do  we  feel  the  unworthiness  of  those  we  love.  If 
you  want  a  person's  faults,  go  to  those  who  love  him.  They 
will  not  tell  you,  but  they  know.  And  herein  lies  the  magnani- 
mous courage  of  love,  that  it  endures  this  knowledge  without 
change. " 

Stevenson. 

"At  the  call  of  love  men  and  women  constantly  show  them- 
selves ready  to  re-fashion  their  lives,  to  part  with  habits  as  dear 
to  them  as  their  own  flesh,  to  open  their  hearts  to  an  entirely 
novel  set  of  sensations,  to  adopt  a  kind  of  life,  the  very  laws  of 
which  have  been  hitherto  unknown  to  them.  If  you  can  create 
a  noble  attachment  between  a  good  man  and  a  man  far  from 
good,  that  attachment  will  prove  the  salvation  of  the  weaker 
man.  He  will  learn  to  live  his  whole  life  with  constant  reference 
to  the  approval  of  his  friend.  " 

W.  J.  Dawson. 


(200) 


THEY  WHO  TRUST  US  EDUCATE  US 

When  Dr.  Arnold  went  to  Rugby,  he  found  on  the 
walls  of  the  schoolroom,  placards  containing  certain 
prohibitions.  He  immediately  removed  them  and  said  to 
the  students,  "Young  gentlemen,  I  trust  you.  I  expect 
you  to  be  gentlemen."  When  he  went  to  Rugby, 
lying  was  considered  very  good  morals  in  the  public 
schools.  He  always  met  a  boy's  assertion  with  the 
statement,  "If  you  say  so,  that  is  enough  for  me;  of 
course,  I  can  take  your  word."  The  feeling  was  soon 
developed  among  the  students,  that  it  was  a  shame  to 
tell  Dr.  Arnold  a  lie,  because,  said  the  boys,  he  always 
believes  what  you  say.  By  trusting  the  boys.  Dr.  Arnold 
educated  them  out  of  lying  into  frankness.  The  tradition 
of  the  school  was  revolutionized. 

Dr.  Arnold's  attitude  toward  his  students  illustrates 
a  marked  habit  of  Jesus.  And  Jesus'  habit  was  never 
better  illustrated  than  in  the  incident  on  the  Sea  of 
Galilee,  which  Zimmermann  has  embodied  in  his  picture. 
It  was  after  the  great  draft  of  fishes,  and  the  disciples 
had  recovered  from  their  excitement  and  eaten  together 
on   the  shore.    The  moment   so   simply   and   sincerely 

(201) 


202  "CHRIST  AND  THE  FISHERMEN" 

represented  in  the  picture  is  the  moment,  when,  to  Peter, 
"all  dripping  still,  shivering,  and  amazed;  and  having 
had  no  word  once  changed  with  him  by  his  Master  since 
that  look  of  His," — to  him,  so  amazed,  comes  the  question, 
"Simon,  lovest  thou  me?" 

The  artist  has  put  a  look  of  sadness  into  Peter's 
strong,  earnest  face,  because  he  was  hurt  at  Jesus' 
doubt  of  his  love;  a  doubt  suggested  by  the  repetition  of 
the  question,  and  also  by  the  change  in  the  form  of  the 
question.  There  are  two  words  for  love  in  the  New 
Testament.  Agape  means  love  without  desire;  love 
that  is  willing  to  suflfer.  Philia  means  a  selfish  love  that 
looks  for  return.  Jesus  twice  asked  whether  Peter  loved 
him  on  the  higher  plane  (Agape).  Peter,  remembering 
his  recent  denial,  answered  that  he  loved  Him  on  the 
lower  plane  (Philia).  He  could  go  that  far.  Then 
Jesus  changed  the  question,  and  asked  whether  he  was 
sure  he  loved  Him  even  on  that  lower  plane  (Philia). 

Jesus  had  good  reason  to  mistrust  Peter.  In  spite  of 
that.  He  put  implicit  confidence  in  him,  and,  as  the  pic- 
ture represents  Him,  He  tenderly  clasped  the  rough  brown 
hands  of  the  old  fisherman,  while  He  entrusted  to  Him 
His  great  message  to  the  world.  Then  He  immediately 
predicted  Peter's  fidelity,  and  Peter  proved  true  to  the 
trust.  Jesus  always  trusted  men,  and  expected  the  best 
from  them,  not  because  He  did  not  know  men,  but  because 


THEY  WHO  TRUST  US  EDUCATE  US  20.3 

He  did.  He  deliberately  refused  to  look  at  what  He  did 
not  like.  In  His  best  known  sermon  He  did  not  say, 
cursed  are  the  proud,  the  luxurious,  the  corrupt  in  heart; 
but  blessed  are  the  meek,  the  poor  in  spirit,  the  pure  in 
heart.  He  assumed  that  such  qualities  existed  and  sought 
to  educate  them  by  trusting  them. 

This  habit  of  Jesus  is  one  of  great  educational  value. 
George  Matheson  reminds  us,  that  we  learn  our  first 
lesson  in  morality,  not  from  the  good  we  do,  but  from 
the  good  we  receive.  We  learn  the  beauty  of  justice,  not 
by  doing  a  just  action,  but  by  having  a  just  action  done 
to  us.  The  attitude  of  others  to  us  is  our  first  great 
teacher.  Sociologists  tell  us  that  expectation  was  the 
earliest  form  of  law.  Before  any  rule  of  action  was 
formulated,  the  expectation  of  a  decision  in  accordance 
with  the  community's  sense  of  right,  was  the  earliest 
legal  code.  The  people's  expectation  of  the  best  from 
their  rulers  and  judges,  educated  the  rulers  into 
giving  it. 

Our  trust  in  man's  better  nature,  on  the  whole  is  not 
disappointed.  The  band  of  men  on  whom  Jesus  depended 
at  first,  were,  all  in  all,  no  wiser  or  nobler,  and  not  even 
including  Judas,  more  worldly  or  cowardly  than  twelve 
average  Christians  to-day.  His  trust  in  them  miscarried 
only  in  one  out  of  twelve.  Dr.  Arnold's  success  was 
equally  as  great.     For  a  good  man  to  expect  the  best  of 


204  "CHRIST  AND  THE  FISHERMEN" 

others  is  an  invitation  to  them  to  stand  on  his  plane. 
Most  will  accept  it. 

This  principle  succeeds  with  men,  among  whom  its 
success  might  naturally  be  least  expected.  The  head  of 
a  state  reformatory  once  devised  a  unique  method  of 
trusting  the  men  under  his  care.  He  drafted  a  "bond  of 
trust,"  in  quasi-legal  form,  neatly  printed  and  with  a 
large  gold  seal.  He  selected  a  few  with  the  best  record, 
and  entrusted  to  them  exceptional  missions,  without 
putting  them  under  guard. 

But  who  should  sign  the  bond  ?  Who  should  take 
the  responsibility  for  their  escape  ?  As  each  bond  was 
issued,  the  superintendent  said,  "It  is  no  fiction  which 
joins  my  name  with  yours.  This  plan  is  an  experiment. 
If  it  fails,  it  will  bring  me  under  criticism.  I  must  hold 
my  assistant  harmless,  if  you  escape.  No  one  can  share 
the  risk  with  you  but  myself.  All  I  have  to  secure  my 
reputation  is  your  word  of  honor." 

The  "bond  of  trust"  has  been  issued  to  forty  men, 
who  prize  it  beyond  gold.  It  gives  them  the  joy  of 
being  trusted,  and  the  chance  to  play  the  man  and  the 
good  citizen.  Not  one  of  the  forty  has  broken  his  bond. 
Speaking  of  his  success  one  day,  the  superintendent  said, 
you  remember  that  the  Lord  Jesus  trusted  the  whole 
future  of  his  gospel  to  twelve  men.  They  all  ran  away 
once,  and  one  of  them  never  came  back.     He  underwrites 


THEY  WHO  TRUST  US  EDUCATE  US  205 

our  feeble  efforts  to  do  good.  In  the  long  run,  His  way 
succeeds.  We  are  just  trying  to  apply  his  method  here 
as  nearly  as  we  can.  Judge  Ben  B.  Lindsey  also  has 
applied  the  same  principle,  with  such  notable  success  in 
his  treatment  of  boys,  that  the  wisdom  of  Jesus'  method 
becomes  daily  more  apparent. 

The  desire  for  goodness  in  human  hearts  is  a  plant, 
which,  to  grow,  needs  watering  from  the  outside.  Our 
trust  in  it  is  the  irrigation  which  helps  it  break  out  into 
bloom.  One  of  the  best  services  a  man  can  render  his 
fellows  is  to  irrigate  this  side  of  their  nature  by  trusting 
it.  One  of  the  most  subtle  temptations  of  life  is  to  reg- 
ulate our  dealings  with  others,  not  by  our  own  conviction 
of  the  best  thing  to  do,  but  by  our  opinion  of  the  people 
with  whom  we  deal.  To  treat  small  people  on  their 
own  low  plane  is  always  a  blunder.  The  wisest  way  is 
to  fight  meanness,  not  with  meanness,  but  with  goodness. 
We  do  not  fight  fire  with  fire;  we  fight  it  with  water.  To 
expect  the  best  from  others  as  Jesus  did  from  Peter,  even 
if  it  does  not  succeed  in  enabling  them  to  meet  our  ex- 
pectation, as  it  did  with  Peter,  at  least  it  supplies  one  of 
the  strongest  incentives  for  them  to  try  to  do  so. 

In  Mrs.  Alice  Hegan  Rice's  book,  "Lovey  Mary," 
Mary  says  to  Mrs.  Wiggs,  as  they  part,  "I  could  never 
forget  you  all,  wherever  I  went.  I  was  awful  mean,  when 
I  came  to  the  Cabbage  Patch.     Somehow  you  all  Just 


?o6  "CHRIST  AND  THE  IISHERMEN" 

bluffed  me  into  being  better.  I  wasn't  used  to  being 
bragged  on,  and  it  made  me  want  to  be  good  more  than 
anything  in  the  world." 


XV 

St.  Michael  and  the  Dragon 

From  a  painting  by  Guido  Reni 


^T     MICHAEL  AND  THE   DRAGON 
By  Guido  Reni 

The  original  of  this  picture  is  in  the  Church  of  the  Capu- 
chins, Rome.  The  reproduction  is  from  a  photograph  by  Alinari, 
Florence.  The  dragon  is  a  generally  accepted  emblem  in  art 
of  the  principle  of  evil.  Michael,  whose  name  means  "like 
unto  God,"  was  looked  on  in  Hebrew  legend  as  the  Captain- 
General  of  the  heavenly  host,  and  the  guardian  of  souls.  His 
attribute  is  sometimes  the  sword,  as  in  this  picture,  and  sometimes 
the  scales,  as  in  a  poem  by  James  Russell  Lowell,  called  "St. 
Michael,  the  Weigher." 


XV 

Interpretation 
The  Human  Heart  a  Battle- Field 


"I  do  not  understand  what  I  am  working  out  in  my  life. 
For  I  do  not  practice  what  I  have  purposed ;  and  I  hate  what  I 
produce. " 

Paul. 

"In  man  there's  failure,  only  since  he  left  the  lower  and 
unconscious  forms  of  life.  " 

Browning. 

"He  that  ruleth  his  spirit  is  greater  than  he  that  taketh  a 
city.  " 

Proverbs. 

"When  the  fight  begins  within  himself,  a  man's  worth  some- 
thing. 

Browning. 

"No  religion,  so  far  as  I  know,  has  dwelt  like  Christianity 
with  such  profound  earnestness  on  the  bisection  of  man — on  the 
distinction  within  him,  vital  to  the  very  last  degree,  between 
the  higher  and  the  lower,  heaven  and  hell.  " 

Mark  Rutherford. 

"Life  is  not  a  May-game,  but  a  battle  and  a  march,  a  war-- 
fare  with  principalities  and  powers.  No  idle  promenade  through 
fragrant  orange  groves  and  green  fiowerj''  spaces,  waited  on  by 
the  choral  muses  and  the  rosy  hours;  it  is  a  stem  pilgrimage 
through  the  rough,  burning,  sandy  solitudes,  through  regions  of 
thick-ribbed  ice.  " 

Carlyle. 

"Ever  since  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  was  written,  it  has 
become  a  Christian  commonplace  that,  in  all  moral  experience, 
I  am  divided  against  myself ;  inwardly  identified  with  a  superior 
call  that  beckons  me;  outwardly  liable  to  take  my  lot  with  the 
inferior  inclination  that  clings  to  me.  " 

Martineau. 


(212) 


i 


THE  HUMAN  HEART  A  BATTLE-FIELD 

Plato  describes  man  as  a  creature  who  is  like  a  chari- 
oteer driving  two  headstrong  steeds.  The  names  of  the 
steeds  are  Appetite  and  Spirit.  The  name  of  the  driver 
is  Reason.  This  description  is  true  to  the  universal 
moral  experience  of  men.  For  the  one  supreme  conflict 
of  life  arises  from  the  effort  to  control  these  fiery  horses, 
to  make  them  work  in  harmony,  and  to  adjust  and  sub- 
ordinate them  both  to  reason.  Conflict  with  an  outside 
foe  is  simple,  but  when  the  man  is  divided  against  himself, 
the  warfare  is  complicated.  The  midnight  struggle  of 
Jean  Val  Jean  in  Hugo's  "Les  Miserables,"  over  two 
proposed  courses  of  action,  made  every  other  conflict 
of  his  life  seem  unimportant  in  comparison. 

The  conflict  on  the  unseen  battle-field  of  the  hefert  is 
so  universal  and  vital,  that  it  is  reflected  in  art  and  poetry 
and  legend  more  than  any  other  subject.  It  is  hinted  at 
in  the  Laocoon.  It  is  represented  in  all  pictures  of  the 
battle  between  St.  George  and  the  dragon,  and  St,  Michael 
and  the  dragon.  It  is  embodied  in  all  legends  of  good 
and  bad  angels,  contending  for  the  possession  of  dead  men. 
The  most  extensive  use  of  the  myth  is  in  Goethe's  "Faust," 

(213) 


214     "ST.  MICHAEL  AND  THE  DRAGON"— RENI 

where  celestial  and  infernal  cohorts  battle  for  Faust's 
immortal  portion.  It  is  the  subject  of  all  such  stories 
as  "Stevenson's  "Dr.  Jekyl  and  Mr.  Hyde;"  a  story  that 
gained  immense  popularity,  not  only  because  it  was  a 
masterly  work  of  dramatic  art,  but  also  and  chiefly 
because  it  appealed  to  an  experience  universally  known. 

Of  all  the  literature  on  the  subject,  the  classic  por- 
trayal of  this  inner  conflict  is  the  seventh  and  eighth 
chapters  of  Paul's  letter  to  the  Romans,  classic,  not  only 
because  it  vividly  describes  the  conflict,  but  also  because 
it  states  the  cause  of  it,  and  points  the  way  to  victory  in  it. 
Paul  describes  it  at  once  as  his  own  and  as  a  generic  uni- 
versal experience.  So  real  is  it  to  him,  that  he  describes 
it  as  waged  between  two  distinct  and  different  characters. 
The  lower  nature  is  like  a  robber  in  a  house,  like  a  man 
lying  in  ambush  ready  to  spring  up  and  slay  his  better 
nature  as  he  passes. 

Guido  Reni's  picture  makes  vivid  on  canvas  what 
Paul  says  in  words,  that  the  two  sides  of  man's  nature  are 
an  actual  dual  man,  that  these  are  distinctly  at  war  with 
each  other,  and  that  through  life  it  is  an  unsettled  con- 
flict. Not  that  a  man  does  not  grow  better  through  the 
years,  but  the  conflict  may  not  grow  less  severe,  for  each 
stage  of  life  has  its  own  peculiar  dangers.  After  years  of 
moral  victories  the  conflict  may  be  just  as  severe,  but  the 
battle  is  fought  on  a  different  and  a  higher  plane,  that  is 


THE  HUMAN  HEART  A  BATTLE-FIELD         215 

alL  The  conflict  is  not  always  vehement,  for  life  is  like 
an  ocean  voyage.  To-day  the  sea  is  glass;  to-morrow  it 
is  lashed  into  fury  by  a  cyclone.  But  the  possibility  of 
storm  is  always  present,  as  Paul  so  keenly  felt. 

The  conflict  is  caused,  Paul  says,  by  the  introduction 
into  man's  life  of  a  good  and  a  better  law  than  he  has 
known.  It  awakens  his  higher  nature  and  gives  him  a 
vision  of  what  he  might  become.  Not  that  the  appetites 
of  the  man,  who  has  now  become  his  lower  nature,  are  bad 
in  themselves,  for  no  elemental  appetite  or  passion  in  man 
is  intrinsically  bad.  It  is  too  seldom  remembered  that 
the  body  itself  can  never  commit  a  sin,  unless  the  will 
consents  and  the  soul  goads  it  on.  The  appetites  are  bad 
only  when  they  refuse  to  be  subordinate  and  to  be  driven 
by  the  charioteer,  the  new  master  who  has  come  into  the 
man's  life. 

Paul's  thought,  as  a  great  writer  points  out,  is  that 
the  drama  of  the  Garden  of  Eden  is  repeated  in  the  life  of 
every  child.  His  first  state  is  that  of  innocence,  having 
neither  virtue  nor  vice.  Very  soon,  obeying  a  natural 
impulse,  he  assays  to  do  an  injurious  act.  His  mother 
checks  him.  He  repeats  it.  She  forbids  him  again, 
and  at  last  taps  his  hand,  not  enough  to  hurt  it,  but 
just  enough  to  enforce  the  law.  Then  a  new  look  of 
wonder  comes  into  baby's  eyes,  which  the  mother  will 
never  forget.     It  is  the  new,  strange  consciousness  of  a 


2i6     "ST.  MICHAEL  AND  THE  DRAGON"— REN  I 

higher  law  than  his  own  impulse,  which  is  dawning  on 
baby's  soul,  a  law  which  calls  him  to  a  higher  life  than 
that  of  a  mere  animal,  in  that  moment  begins  a  conflict 
between  the  natural  man  with  his  impulses,  and  the  new 
law,  which  develops  virtue  out  of  innocence  through  strife, 
a  conflict  which  will  not  end  so  long  as  life  lasts. 

The  coming  of  the  higher  law  into  man's  life  produces 
the  conflict,  not  only  because  it  shows  him  what  he  might 
become,  but  also  because  for  the  first  time  it  makes  sin 
and  failure  to  be  possible.  If  there  had  been  no  law,  there 
had  been  no  sin.  For  sin  is  the  perception  of  an  absent 
good,  and  until  we  are  made  capable  of  desiring  that  good, 
its  absence  is  no  evil.  There  is  no  law  in  the  pig  against 
gluttony,  and  gluttony  in  the  pig  is  no  sin.  The  sin  was 
occasioned  by  the  higher  life.  If  there  is  no  higher  life, 
there  is  no  revolt  against  it,  and  if  no  revolt  against  it, 
then  no  sin.  It  is  this  double  progress  upward  from  inno- 
cence to  virtue,  or  downward  from  innocence  to  sin,  both' 
made  possible  by  the  coming  of  the  new  law,  which  has 
led  to  confusion,  and  makes  men  either  optimists  or  pessi- 
mists, according  as  they  look  on  one  or  the  other  of  the 
two  results  of  the  law. 

Guido  Reni's  picture  is  not  entirely  free  from  this 
sense  of  confusion  and  discouragement.  In  the  arch- 
angel's face  there  is  a  degree  of  pain,  trouble,  and  disquiet 
at  being  brought  into  contact  with  sin,  even  for  the  purpose 


THE  HUMAN  HEART  A  BATTLE-FIELD         217 

of  quelling  it.  The  attitude  which  regrets  the  presence  of 
the  conflict  and  seeks  to  withdraw  from  it  is  very  common. 
Rousseau  expresses  it  in  his  dream  of  a  return  to  the 
simplicity  of  nature.  Emerson  expresses  it  in  his  poem 
of  the  Sphinx.  Hawthorne  represents  it  in  the  character 
of  the  Faun,  with  his  power  to  enjoy  the  warm,  sensuous 
earthy  side  of  nature,  reveling  in  the  merriment  of  woods 
and  streams,  with  no  conscience,  no  remorse,  no  burden  on 
his  heart.  Even  if  it  had  been  possible  to  remain  in  the 
state  of  innocence,  before  the  vision  of  a  higher  life  came 
to  disturb  our  peace,  it  is  not  possible  to  do  so  now.  Man 
cannot  return  to  the  Garden  of  Eden.  The  angel  with  a 
flaming  sword  ever  stands  ready  to  guard  against  a  re- 
entrance.  Man  has  seen  the  vision  of  something  better 
than  the  Garden  of  Eden,  and  he  can  never  forget  that  he 
has  seen  it. 

The  chief  value  of  Guido  Reni's  picture  is,  that  it 
represents  the  only  sane  attitude  towards  a  battle,  from 
which  there  is  no  escape,  unless  one  is  either  a  child  or  a 
volunteer  prisoner  of  the  enemy,  and  that  is,  to  arm  for 
the  conflict  and  from  it  wrest  a  victory,  as  St.  Michael 
has  done.  Plato  and  Paul  agree  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
conflict  and  the  attitude  to  be  taken  to  it,  but  Plato  was 
not  sure  of  the  victory,  represented  in  Guido  Reni's  picture, 
as  Paul  was.  For  Paul's  charioteer  had  an  unseen  com- 
panion, the  Lord  Christ,  ever  in  the  chariot  with  him. 


2i8     "ST.  MICHAEL  AND  THE  DRAGON"— RENl 

who  did  most  of  the  driving  for  him,  and  ever  whispered 
to  him  instructions  and  words  of  cheer.  The  eighth 
chapter  of  Paul's  letter  is  not  a  song  of  victory  sung  after 
the  battle,  but  the  description  of  a  good  soldier  in  the 
battle.  It  narrates  what  the  good  soldier  in  the  battle 
learns  from  his  unseen  companion,  by  means  of  which  he 
becomes  victor.  He  learns  that  it  is  no  sin  to  be  in  the 
fight.  The  only  sin  is  not  to  fight.  The  fight  itself  is 
good.  The  wounds  he  receives  will  not  dismay  him,  for  he 
sees  that  the  design  of  the  conflict  is  to  develop  in  his  soul 
sinews  of  steel.  Victory  and  wounds  must  needs  go  to- 
gether. Neither  is  possible  except  as  both  are  possible. 
He  may  make  mistakes,  but  he  is  not  sinful;  he  need 
have  no  remorse;  he  is  under  no  condemnation,  if  only  he 
is  willing  to  fight  on  the  right  side.  For  "God  measures 
men,  not  by  their  actions,  but  by  their  endeavors;  not  by 
what  they  are,  but  by  what  they  are  striving  to  become; 
not  by  the  place  they  occupy,  but  by  the  direction  in 
which  they  are  moving." 

In  Dante's  account  of  the  contest  between  the  good 
and  bad  angels  over  Buonconte,  the  bad  angel  was  de- 
feated, he  says,  through  one  little  tear  of  penitence  from 
the  man.  His  willingness  to  assist  the  better  nature  in 
him  turned  the  balance  on  that  side.  The  one  condition 
of  victory  which  Paul  and  Guido  Reni's  picture  insist  upon 
is,  that  a  man  make  an  honest  effort  to  help  the  better 


THE  HUMAN  HEART  A  BATTLE-FIELD         219 

nature  in  him  to  win,  and  botii  the  picture  and  Paul 
predict  victory  to  such  honest  effort. 

"Honest  work  for  the  day, 
Honest  hope  for  the  morrow. 
Are  these  worth  nothing 
More  than   the  hands   they  make  weary. 
The  hearts  they  leave  dreary? 
Hush — the  seven-fold  Heavens 
Repeat — He  that  overcometh 
Shall  all  things  inherit." 


XVI 
Ecce  Homo 

From  a  painting  by  Professor  Antonio  Ciseri 


"ECCE    HOMO!" 
By  Antonio  Ciseri 

The  foreground  of  this  picture  represents  the  entrance  to 
Pilate's  Praetorium,  which  was  probably  the  summer  palace 
of  Herod,  on  the  north  side  of  Mount  Zion,  overlooking  the 
temple  enclosure.  The  Temple,  is  seen  in  the  background. 
The  two  buildings  repres;ent  the  two  brutal  forces,  by  the  collision 
of  which  Jesus  was  destroyed.  The  Jewish  priests  and  mob 
are  on  the  outside.  They  would  not  enter  the  Praetorium, 
for  they  felt  defiled  by  contact  with  Rome.  They  refused  to 
plead  in  the  hall  of  judgment.  Pilate,  in  order  to  speak  to  them, 
had  to  go  out,  as  the  picture  represents  him  as  doing.  On  the 
right  is  Pilate's  wife  with  troubled  face,  who,  because  of  a  dream, 
had  sent  word  ,to  her  husband  to  have  no  part  in  the  condemna- 
tion of  th'-  nri^rmf-r  The  picture  i'i  in  rh^-  National  Gallery, 
Rome.' 


\ 


XVI 

Interpretation 
An  Unavoidable  Question 


"What  then  shall  I  do  unto  Jesus,  who  is  called  Christ?" 

Pilate. 

"The  man  faithful  to  principle  is  never  cruel;  the  victim  of 
expediency  always  is.  " 

Fairbairn. 

"Pilate  went  out  again  and  saith  unto  them,  Behold,  I 
bring  him  out  to  you,  that  ye  may  know  that  I  find  no  crime  in 
him.  Jesus  therefore  came  out  wearing  the  crown  of  thorns, 
and  the  purple  robe.  And  Pilate  saith  unto  them.  Behold  the 
man! " 

John. 

"What  is  Pilate?  A  Pilate  is  one  of  those  courtly  gentle- 
men, polished,  tasteful,  expert,  who  is  not  disturbed  nor  warped 
by  convictions  in  over  measure;  who  looks  upon  all  moral 
qualities  as  a  gambler  looks  upon  cards,  which  he  shuffles,  and 
pla3''s  according  to  the  exigency  of  his  game, — and  one  just  as 
easy  as  another.  A  Pilate  is  a  man  who  believes  in  letting 
things  have  their  own  way.  'Do  not  sarcifice  yourself.  Do 
not  get  in  the  way  of  a  movement.  And,  whatever  comes,  see 
that  you  come  out  uppermost.  Preserve  your  balance.  See 
that  you  keep  your  eye  on  the  chances.  If  they  go  this  way, 
you  go  with  them  far  enough  to  reap  them.  If  they  go  the 
other  way,  go  with  them.  Do  not  be  too  scrupulous.  Be  just 
enough  so  to  gain  your  ends.  Use  men,  use  events,  use  every- 
thing that  is  profitable.  Do  not  use  your  conscience  too  much! ' 
This  is  the  language  of  the  Pilates  of  our  day.  Those  men  who 
are  poUshed,  cold,  calculating,  speculating, — these  are  the 
Pirates, — the  Pilates,  I  mean  I  It  was  a  blunder  of  the  lip,  after 
all,  it  hit  right.  " 

Beecher. 


(226) 


AN  UNAVOIDABLE  QUESTION 

Sometimes  the  names  of  historical  events  come  to 
stand  for  spiritual  facts.  "Crossing  the  Rubicon" 
means  an  irrevocable  decision,  "Waterloo,"  an  over- 
whelming defeat.  The  one  represents  the  decisive  event 
in  the  life  of  Caesar,  the  other,  in  the  life  of  Napoleon.  In 
like  manner,  the  question,  "What  then  shall  I  do  with 
Jesus?"  stands  for  the  central  event  in  Pilate's  life,  and 
it  has  come  to  stand  also  for  a  spiritual  fact.  The  real 
nature  of  Pilate's  character  was  revealed,  and  his  place 
in  history  fixed,  by  the  answer  he  made  to  it.  Professor 
Ciseri  in  his  picture  has,  with  clear  insight,  represented 
the  most  dramatic  and  critical  moment  in  the  tragedy 
of  Christ's  trial,  and  Pilate's  part  in  it;  the  moment  of 
Pilate's  contest  with  the  Jewish  mob  in  his  effort  to  do 
with  Jesus,  what  he  had  the  power  to  do,  and  what  his 
wife  requested  him  to  do,  and  what  he  believed  he  ought 
to  do,  that  is,  refuse  to  be  a  party  to  His  condemnation. 

The  question  which  Pilate  asked  the  mob  was  simple 
and  natural,  and  necessary  to  the  narration  of  his  attempt 
to  escape  responsibility.  It  was  an  appeal  to  the  Jews' 
patriotism*  "What  shall  I  then  do  with  Jesus,  who  is 

(2  2  7) 


2  28  "ECCE  HOMO"— ANTONIO  CISERI 

called  Christ;  who  is  your  King  and  Messiah?"  It  is 
evident  that  Pilate  struggled  hard  to  save  Jesus,  because 
he  did  not  believe  in  his  guilt;  but  believed  he  was  the 
victim  of  unjust  hate.  The  picture  shows  the  cruel  ex- 
pedient he  tried  in  this  effort.  It  represents  Pilate  show- 
ing Jesus  to  the  mob  after  he  had  been  scourged  and  clad 
in  the  symbols  of  mock  royality,  bleeding  and  humiliated, 
as  a  spectacle  which  he  thought,  would  be  calculated  to 
awaken  pity  and  satisfy  the  mob's  desire  for  revenge. 

The  picture  appropriately  emphasizes  Pilate's  act 
of  appealing  to  the  crowd.  For  by  that  appeal  the  con- 
trol of  events  passed  from  his  hands.  He  allowed  the 
crowd  to  determine  what  he  should  do  with  Jesus.  By 
his  surrender  to  the  mob,  Pilate  turned  his  back  upon 
Jesus,  and  upon  his  clearly  perceived  duty  as  well.  By 
washing  his  hands  of  responsibility,  he  had  answered  the 
very  question  he  sought  to  avoid.  His  answer  was  fatal 
both  to  him  and  to  the  mob.  With  a  just  and  divine 
irony,  the  crucifixion  which  the  Jews  demanded  to  be 
inflicted  on  Jesus,  was  inflicted  on  myriads  of  Jews  during 
the  siege  of  Jerusalem,  and  they  were  sold  as  slaves  in 
great  numbers  for  less  than  thirty  pieces  of  silver. 

More  significant  still  is  the  fate  of  the  individuals 
most  prominent  in  the  murder  of  Jesus.  "Before  the 
dread  sacrifice  was  consummated,  Judas  died  in  the  hor- 
rors of  a  loathsome  suicide.    Caiaphas  was  deposed  the 


AN  UNAVOIDABLE  QUESTION  229 

year  following.  Herod  died  in  infamy  and  exile.  Pilate, 
wearied  with  misfortunes,  died  a  suicide  and  in  banish- 
ment, leaving  behind  him  an  execrated  name.  The 
house  of  Annas  was  destroyed  a  generation  later,  and  his 
son  was  dragged  through  the  streets  and  scourged  to  his 
place  of  murder. "  The  tragic  story  is  a  parable  in  action. 
Because  men  who  turn  their  backs  on  the  truth,  when 
they  once  see  it,  comm.it  moral  suicide. 

Pilate's  question,  simple  and  natural  at  the  first,  gains 
new  meaning  in  the  light  of  his  fruitless  attempt  to  avoid 
what  proved  to  be  an  unavoidable  question.  But  the 
question  is  strangely  pregnant  with  a  deeper  meaning  than 
Pilate  ever  gave  it.  It  has  ceased  to  apply  only  to  Pilate, 
and  has  come  to  represent  a  universal  experience.  W.  J. 
Dawson  suggests  that  every  incident  in  the  life  of  Jesus, 
and  every  phrase  in  its  record,  have  become  so  familiar, 
because  the  life  of  Jesus  is  the  most  representative  of  all 
lives.  It  represents  our  hopes  and  inward  struggles  and 
the  secret  biography  of  our  own  spirits.  Pilate's  question 
is  pregnant  with  meaning  because  it  represents  a  universal 
spiritual  experience.  It  is  an  unavoidable  question  for 
every  man,  because  Jesus  is  the  most  unescapable  char- 
acter of  history.  Every  path  leads  to  Him.  "Where 
love  is,  there  is  Christ.  Where  the  poor  are,  there  is  the 
Divine  poor  man.  So  interwoven  is  His  story  with 
human  though  L  that  where  childhood  is,  there  is  Bethle- 


830  "ECCE  HOMO"— ANTONIO  CISERI 

hem;  where  sorrow  is,  there  is  Gethsemane;  where  death 
is,  there  is  Calvary."  It  is  not  possible  to  think  of  any 
salient  aspect  of  human  life  without  thinking  of  Him, 

Pilate's  question  is  unavoidable,  not  only  because 
Jesus  has  interwoven  Himself  with  the  very  fibers  of 
human  life,  but  also  because  He  compels  men  to  answer 
it  and  to  take  some  moral  attitude  towards  Him.  Ciseri's 
picture  is  symbolic,  as  well  as  historical,  for  the  man  who 
looks  at  it,  instinctively  feels  that  he  is  standing  in  Pilate's 
place,  and  Jesus  is  standing  before  the  bar  of  each  man's 
private  judgment  and  awaiting  a  verdict  at  his  hands  as 
he  once  awaited  it  at  Pilate's.  In  Pilate's  private  inter- 
view with  Jesus,  before  he  brought  Him  out  to  the  crowd, 
Pilate  began  to  examine  Jesus  and  soon  found  to  his 
amazement  that  the  roles  were  changed  between  them, 
and  that  Jesus  was  examining  him.  This  is  a  singular 
phenomenon  in  spiritual  experience.  One  may  study 
Plato  and  be  intellectually  inspired.  One  who  studies 
Jesus,  is  spiritually  disturbed.  One  may  accept  the 
teachings  of  Socrates  without  knowing  or  caring  much 
about  Socrates  himself;  one  cannot  study  Jesus  with 
moral  neutrality.  If  one  begins  with  the  non-committal 
question,  "What  think  ye  of  Christ?",  he  finds  himself 
compelled  to  answer  the  practical  moral  question  of  Pilate. 
"What  shall  I  then  do  with  Him?" 

This  question  once  asked  always  has  its  answer. 


AN  UNAVOIDABLE  QUESTION  231 

Even  the  attempt  to  ignore  it,  is  an  answer  as  real  as  any 
other.  For  to  do  nothing  with  Jesus,  or  to  do  without 
Him,  has  its  result.  Its  result  is  despair.  The  life  of 
such  a  man  as  Carlyle  is  the  result.  To  know  the  sin  and 
not  to  know  the  sin  Bearer,  to  know  the  burden  and  not 
to  know  the  burden  Bearer,  to  load  one's  heart  with  the 
burdens  of  men,  is  to  live  a  life  which  may  be  sublime,  but 
must  be  full  of  anguish.  Carlyle  confessed  that  to  carry 
on  one's  conscience  the  sins  of  his  age  and  his  own  imper- 
fect life,  makes  life  seared  and  stern.  Pilate's  question  is 
in  truth  unavoidable,  and  Ciseri's  picture  is  a  vivid  pre- 
sentation of  that  fact.  The  picture  centers  attention  on 
the  chief  point  of  Pilate's  part  in  the  tragedy,  and  makes 
his  attempt  to  avoid  his  own  question  appear,  what  it  in 
fact  was,  most  pathetic. 


XVII 
The  Temptation  in  the  Wilderness 

From  a  painting  by  William  Dyce,  R.  A. 


THE   TEMPTATION  IN  THE  WILDERNESS 


The  original  of  thii  picture  has  been  for  thirty  years  in  the 
private  collection  of  the  late  James  Henry  Stock  of  White  Hall, 
Tarperley,  England.  It  was  first  reproduced  in  William  Sanday's 
"Life  of  Christ."  All  other  artists,  Holbein,  Durer,  Scheffer 
and  even  Tissot,  to  a  degree,  in  treating  the  temptation,  make  use 
'A  the  Conventional  symbolism  of  Satan,  which  was  prominent 
in  the  thought  of  the  Middle  Ages.  This  picture  dispenses  with 
all  external  machinery  and  represents  the  modern  conception 
of  the  temptation  in  contrast  to  the  ancient  or  mediaeval,  and 
as  such  it  is  a  truer  presentation  of  the  deep  spiritual  meaning 
of  that  event. 


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XVII 

Interpretation 
Temptation  as  Opportunity 


"Count  it  all  joy  when  ye  fall  into  manifold  temptation.  " 

James. 

"Lead  us  not  into  temptation.  " 

Jesus. 

"  'Tis  one  thing  to  be  tempted,  Escalus,  another  thing  to 
fall.'  " 

Shakespeare. 

"There  hath  no  temptation  taken  you,  but  such  as  men  can 
bear.  " 

Paul. 

"Held,  we  fall  to  rise;  arc  baffled  to  fight  better;  Sleep  to 
wake. " 

Browning. 

"It  was  my  duty  to  have  loved  the  highest: 
It  surely  was  my  profit  had  I  known: 
It  would  have  been  my  pleasure  had  I  seen: 
We  needs  must  love  the  highest  when  we  see  it. 

Tennyson. 

"On  whatsoever  lines  the  world  may  be  framed,  there 
must  be  distinction,  differeitce,  a  higher  and  a  lower;  and  the 
lower,  relative  to  the  higher,  must  always  be  an  evil.  The 
scale  upon  which  the  higher  and  lower  both  are,  makes  no  differ- 
ence. Perfectly  uninterrupted,  infinite  light,  without  shadow, 
is  a  physical  absurdity.  I  see  a  thing  because  it  is  lighted,  but 
also  because  of  the  differences  of  light,  or,  in  other  words,  because 
of  shade,  and  without  shade  the  universe  would  be  objectless 
and  in  fact  invisible.  Mankind  may  be  improved,  and  the 
improvement  maybe  infinite  and  yet  good  and  evil  must  exist." 

Mark  Rutherford. 


(238) 


TEMPTATION  AS  OPPORTUNITY 

A  man,  said  Frederick  D.  Maurice,  must  have  great 
leisure  or  be  very  youthful,  who  would  occupy  himself  in 
discussing  the  origin  of  evil.  Temptation,  however,  to 
which  evil  subjects  men,  is  a  different  question,  a  question 
with  which  all  men  must  occupy  themselves  whether  they 
wish  to  do  so  or  not.  To  take  some  attitude  towards  it  is 
an  imperative  necessity.  It  is  because  temptation  is  an 
unescapable  experience,  that  the  temptation  of  Jesus,  as 
the  representative  man,  is  a  subject  of  fascinating  interest. 
Mr.  Dyce's  picture  of  Jesus'  experience  emphasizes  a 
fact  about  temptation,  not  infrequently  overlooked,  but  of 
great  practical  value  to  a  problem  manifestly  perplexing. 

Is  Temptation  a  good  or  a  bad  element  in  life?  James 
says  it  is  a  fact  to  be  rejoiced  over.  Jesus,  although  he 
frequently  illustrated  its  divine  uses,  nevertheless  taught 
His  disciples,  in  the  model  prayer,  to  ask  that  they  might 
be  delivered  from  it.  Any  picture  of  Jesus  being  tempted 
is  a  forceful  reminder  of  the  fact  that  temptation  is  a  uni- 
versal experience  from  which  even  He  could  not  escape, 
much  less  others.  The  prayer,  "Lead  us  not  into  temp- 
tation," has  never  yet  been  answered  to  the  extent,  that 

(239) 


240         "TEMPTATION  IN  THE  WILDERNESS" 

any  man  is  entirely  free  from  it.  This  petition  is  im- 
mediately followed  by  a  prayer  for  victory  in  tempta- 
tion, which  is  thus  assumed  to  be  unescapable.  What 
is  universal  need  not  be  wholly  good,  but  it  may  safely 
be  said,  that  what  is  universal  must  have  a  good  side 
to  it.     What  is  temptation's  good  side? 

If  temptation  is  not  only  universal,  but  good,  as 
Jesus  and  James  both  believed,  why  pray  to  be  kept  from 
it?  It  is  some  answer  to  the  question  to  notice  that  the 
Greek  word  translated  "temptation"  has  in  the  New 
Testament  two  distinct  meanings.  It  means  trial  or  test. 
It  also  means  solicitation  to  evil.  The  one  Greek  word 
has  become  two  words  in  English,  and  needs  both  to 
adequately  translate  it.  James  evidently  uses  the  word 
in  the  sense  of  trial.  If  Jesus  used  it  in  the  sense  of 
solicitation  to  evil,  it  is  a  strange  prayer  to  ask  God  not 
to  solicit  us  to  evil,  as  if  God  could  ever  solicit  men  to 
evil!  God  can  be  said  to  tempt  men  only  in  the  sense 
that  He  presents  to  them  a  moral  crisis,  in  which  there 
is  possibility  of  failure. 

If  Jesus  meant  solicitation  to  evil,  the  prayer  might 
mean  that  the  material  gifts,  such  as  bread,  and  the 
spiritual  gifts,  such  as  forgiveness  of  sins,  which  are  asked 
for  in  the  preceding  petition, — that  these  material  and 
spiritual  gifts  may  not  become  our  temptation  by  leading 
us  into  selfishness.     It  is  quite  true  that  God's  material 


TEMPTATION  AS  OPPORTUNITY  241 

and  spiritual  gifts  do  present  to  men  real  temptations. 
It  is  a  most  needful  and  beautiful  suggestion  that  men 
ought  to  pray  that  none  of  God's  gifts  may  dull  their 
consciences.  This  interpretation,  however,  is  too  subtle 
to  be  read  into  the  otherwise  simple  and  practical 
"Lord's  Prayer." 

Whenever  we  touch  upon  the  question  of  evil  we 
may  expect  to  fmd  in  it  the  element  of  unsolved  mystery. 
It  is  so  here.  The  two  meanings  of  the  word  "tempta- 
tion" do  not  solve  the  puzzle;  for,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
solicitation  to  evil  is  the  form,  which  a  man's  trial  does 
most  frequently  assume,  and  it  certainly  constitutes  a 
large  element  in  every  man's  testing,  which  Jesus  says 
is  a  good  thing.  The  fact  that  we  have  come  to  think  of 
temptation  chiefly  as  solicitation  to  evil,  instead  of  the 
trial  of  a  man's  strength,  is  sufficient  evidence  of  this 
statement. 

The  apparent  contradiction  between  Jesus  and 
James,  is  an  illuminating  contradiction.  It  emphasizes 
two  sides  of  a  question,  both  of  which  are  true,  although 
they  may  be  opposite.  This  at  least  is  clear.  The 
prayer,  "Lead  us  not  into  Temptation,"  expresses  the 
natural  shrinking  from  a  contest  which  may  have  fatal 
results.  This  natural  feeling  must  become  a  settled 
attitude,  if  a  man  is  not  to  underrate  his  foe,  or  think  the 
contest   he  faces   is   a  May-day  game.    No  wise  man 


242         "TEMPTATION  IN  THE  WILDERNESS" 

underrates  his  enemy.  To  get  good  out  of  temptation, 
he  must  take  this  attitude;  for  the  contest  is  beneficial 
in  proportion  as  a  man  appreciates  its  intensity  and  its 
dangers.  The  prayer,  "Lead  us  not  into  Temptation," 
means  that  possible  fatal  results  are  to  be  feared.  It 
means,  that  whatever  helpful  use  temptation  may  have, 
it  is  not  a  thing  to  be  invited.  Gunpowder  has  its  uses, 
but  the  wise  man  does  not  keep  barrels  of  it  in  his  chim- 
ney corner. 

While  it  is  true  that  temptation  is  not  to  be  invited, 
it  is  equally  true  that  it  is  not  to  be  avoided.  The  impor- 
tant distinction  to  be  kept  in  mind  is,  that  the  possible 
fatal  results  of  temptation  are  to  be  intelligently  dreaded, 
but  not  the  trial  itself.  The  trial  is  wholly  good.  Only 
by  such  test  is  manhood  developed.  Soldiers  are  made 
by  battle,  not  by  dress  parade.  Until  the  will  is  solicited 
to  evil,  its  fidelity  to  righteousness  cannot  be  established. 
Only  so  can  innocence  be  transformed  into  holiness,  as 
Shakespeare  has  well  illustrated  in  his  "Measure  for 
Measure. "  "  Unbreathed  Virtue, "  to  use  Milton's  phrase, 
that  is,  virtue  untried  by  temptation,  is  no  virtue  at  all. 
It  is  not  vice,  but  it  is  not  virtue.  This  is  why  Jesus  could 
not  escape  temptation.  Dr.  Dyce's  picture  represents  a 
generic  experience  of  Jesus,  true  of  all  other  men. 

The  manifest  purpose  of  temptation  being  to  develop 
virtue  in  a  man,  the  scene  of  such  trial  must  of  necessity 


TEMPTATION  AS  OPPORTUNITY  243 

be  in  each  man's  heart.  The  distinct  contribution  which 
Dr.  Dyce's  picture  makes  is  the  emphasis  which  it  lays 
upon  this  fact.  No  one  was  present  with  Jesus  in  His 
experience.  He,  himself,  therefore  must  have  reported 
it  to  His  disciples.  In  His  report  He  used  the  symbolic 
language  of  His  day,  because  it  would  be  understood. 
Dr.  Dyce  is  the  first  artist,  so  far  as  I  know,  to  record  on 
canvas  his  conviction,  that  Jesus'  language  was  purely 
conventional,  and  that  no  personal  embodiment  of  evil 
was  present  with  Him.  The  picture  says  that  whether 
or  not  any  personal  devil  was  present  with  Jesus,  is  a 
question  of  secondary  importance. 

It  is  most  significant  that  the  principle  of  evil  has 
been  personified  in  the  past  either  as  an  explanation  of  a 
difficult  fact,  or  for  purposes  of  literary  art.  That  this 
is  so  is  seen  by  looking  at  any  of  the  classical  portraits  of 
Satan.  In  Job,  he  is  represented  as  entirely  submissive 
to  God,  but  the  enemy  of  man,  working  only  on  the  out- 
ward events  of  men's  lives.  In  Milton  he  is  represented 
as  rebellious,  independent,  self-sufficient,  a  ruined  arch- 
angel, with  so  little  emphasis  on  the  ruined  and  so  much 
on  the  archangel,  that  he  becomes  the  real  hero  of  Para- 
dise Lost.  In  Dante's  "  Hell' '  he  is  represented  as  Lucifer, 
who  is  cruel  and  essentially  contemptible,  whom  none 
could  be  tempted  to  admire.  In  Goethe's  Faust,  he  is 
represented  in  Mephistopheles,  cunning,  subtle,  intellec- 


244         "TEMPTATION  IN  THE  WILDERNESS" 

tual,  able  to  make  black  appear  white,  presenting  a  case 
as  plausible  as  that  presented  to  Christ  in  the  desert. 
Here  are  four  studies  in  an  attempt  to  explain  a  fact. 
They  do  not  represent  the  fact  itself.  "  Finding  in  their 
souls  a  wide  background  of  grandeur  and  wretchedness, 
whence  they  sometimes  heard  a  burst  of  distant  harmonies, 
calling  them  to  a  higher  life,  soon  to  be  overpowered 
by  the  clamors  of  the  brute,  our  ancestors  could  not  refrain 
from  seeking  the  explanation  of  this  duel.  They  found 
it  in  the  conflict  of  the  demons  with  God." 

It  is  a  great  gain  to  truth  when  we  are  able  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  fact  itself  and  the  explanation  of  it. 
Men  have  dwelt  on  the  explanation  because  the  fact  is  of 
the  utmost  importance,  and  because  they  have  never 
been  quite  willing  to  believe  that  man  alone  is  responsible 
for  all  the  moral  disaster  in  human  life.  They  have 
believed  that  an  external  principle  of  evil  is  partly  respon- 
sible for  it.  But  it  is  no  real  explanation  of  evil  to  refer 
it  to  the  devil.  To  do  so  just  traces  it  one  step  farther 
back  and  leaves  it  as  much  a  mystery  as  before.  The 
duel  in  man's  heart  remains  just  the  same  with  or  with- 
out our  explanations.  The  point  to  be  noted  is,  that 
whatever  external  factors  there  may  or  may  not  be  in 
any  man's  temptation,  the  scene  of  the  real  conflict  is 
always  in  each  man's  own  heart.  This  is  the  ultimate 
fact  in  Christ's  temptation,  and  in  every  other  man's. 


TEMPTATION  AS  OPPORTUNITY  245 

Dr.  Dyce's  picture  does  a  real  service  by  laying  aside  ail 
mechanical  externals  and  centering  our  attention  on  the 
fact   itself. 

The  impressive  feature  of  the  picture  is  the  loneli- 
ness of  Jesus.  The  scene  of  the  temptation,  identified 
as  a  certain  hill  called  "Quarantania,"  rising  from  the 
Judean  plain,  only  serves  to  increase  the  sense  of  loneli- 
ness. "These  scarred  and  frowning  rocks,  this  bloomless 
waste,  this  gloomy  illimitable  plain"  overwhelm  the  spirit. 
The  element  of  loneliness  is  common  to  all  temptation. 
Every  man  must  enter  it  absolutely  alone.  As  a  young 
man  on  the  threshold  of  His  life-work,  Jesus  goes  apart  to 
fight  out  this  battle  alone.  Lowell  portrays  Columbus 
on  the  verge  of  his  discovery  brooding  apart  from  his 
crew. 

"  If  the  chosen  soul  could  never  be  alone 
In    deep    mid-silence,    open-doored    to    God, 
No  greatness  ever  had  been  dreamed  or  done; 
Among  dull  hearts  a  prophet  never  grew; 
The  nurse  of  full-grown  souls  is  solitude." 

The  picture  represents  Jesus  seated  upon  a  stone,  with 
hands  clasped,  and  an  expression  of  intense  thought  on 
His  face.  The  conflict  is  a  real  one  to  Him.  A  temptation 
by  its  very  terms  involves  the  risk  of  failure.  If  there 
were  no  possibility  of  Jesus'  failure,  then  the  story  of 


246         "TEMPTATION  IN  THE  WILDERNESS" 

His  temptation  is  a  farce  and  an  insincere  fable.  Jesus 
did  nothing  with  design,  or  for  show.  The  picture  correctly 
represents  Him  agonizing  in  a  struggle,  the  issue  of  which 
is  not  a  foregone  conclusion. 

The  question  which  constituted  His  temptation  is  one 
which  He  could  have  answered  in  either  of  two  ways. 
It  was  His  exceptional  opportunity,  His  exceptional 
life-work  and  His  exceptional  endowments,  which  occa- 
sioned His  temptation.  It  came  from  His  desire  to  do 
right — but  what  means  shall  He  use?  Two  paths 
stretched  before  Him.  One,  a  straight  road  with  no 
compromises,  but  rough  and  rugged  that  led  to  suffering 
and  apparent  defeat.  The  other,  a  broad,  winding  road 
that  led  to  immediate  victory.  If  He  would  only  lower 
His  standard  a  little,  yield  a  little  to  the  nation's  preju- 
dices and  expectations,  compromise  with  the  priestly 
aristocracy,  join  forces  with  Csesar,  use  force  as  Alexander 
and  other  conquerors  had  done,  adopt  the  policy  of 
expediency.  He  could  reach  His  goal  more  easily. 

The  suggestion  sounds  plausible.  If  there  were 
nothing  plausible  in  this,  it  would  not  be  a  temptation. 
There  is  no  temptation  where  there  is  no  desire.  This 
principle  is  self-evident  and  axiomatic.  In  a  word,  Jesus 
was  tempted  to  follow  a  lower  in  the  presence  of  a  higher 
course, — "To  take  the  lower  for  the  higher  good,  the 
immediate  for  the  final  victory,   the  material   for  the 


TEMPTATION  AS  OPPORTUNITY  247 

spiritual  conquest."  Whatever  interpretation  is  given 
to  the  three  forms  in  which  the  temptation  of  Jesus  is 
described,  this  is  the  moral  core  of  it.  It  is  the  generic 
element  in  His  temptation.  This  is  the  heart  of  all 
temptation;  it  is  a  call  to  choose  between  a  higher  and  a 
lower;  and  sin  is  just  following  the  lower  in  the  presence 
of  the  higher,  doing  that  which  is  easy  instead  of  that 
which  is  right. 

If  this  is  the  essential  nature  of  all  temptation,  then 
it  follows  that  every  temptation  is  an  opportunity,  for 
it  is  as  much  a  call  to  the  higher,  as  it  is  an  allurement  to 
the  lower.  Temptation  is  never  mere  solicitation  to  evil. 
No  moral  crisis  ever  allured  a  man  to  the  evil,  which  does 
not  at  the  same  time  invite  him  to  the  good.  The  picture 
of  Jesus'  temptation  is  the  picture  of  His  greatest  oppor- 
tunity and  His  greatest  victory.  It  was  His  opportunity 
to  choose  the  highest.  His  victory  was  that  he  chose  the 
near  defeat  and  the  far  success,  rather  than  the  near 
success  and  the  far  defeat. 

In  the  spiritual  history  of  man  there  is  no  more 
impressive  scene  than  this.  "The  fate  of  a  soul,  of  a  career, 
of  a  service  unparalleled,  of  a  pouring  out  of  lo\e  which 
has  run  like  a  tide  over  a  sorrowful  earth,  was  at  stake." 
It  was  a  crisis  not  only  for  Christ,  but  for  all  men.  This 
is  what  makes  the  victory  He  won  so  .significant.  For 
this  reason  Milton  finishes  his  "Paradise  Regained"  at 


248         "TEMPTATION  IN  THE  WILDERNESS" 

this  point.  The  victory  that  Jesus  won  in  His  temptation 
is  this: — that  he  was  crowned  king  over  Himself.  In 
that  victory  all  men  may  share,  for  every  temptation 
presents  to  every  other  man  the  same  opportunity.  At 
the  top  of  the  "  Mount  of  Struggle  "  Virgil  said  to  Dante, — 

"  Expect  no  more,  or  word  or  sign  from  me; 
Free  and  upright  and  sound  is  thy  free  will 
And  error  were  it  not  to  do  its  bidding; 
Thee  o'er  thyself   I   therefore  crown   and  mitre." 

Every  temptation,  every  chance  to  use  the  will  in  choosing 
the  highest  is  an  opportunity  to  become  king  over  one's 
self. 

To  regard  temptation  as  opportunity  furnishes  the 
key  to  victory  over  it.  Jesus  met  the  solicitation  to  evil 
by  an  assertion  of  the  supremacy  of  the  spiritual  over  the 
material  in  "A  ringing  statement  of  one  of  those  truths 
which  shine  like  stars  above  the  confusion  of  the  world, 
'Man  shall  not  live  by  bread  alone.'  "  If  temptation  is 
to  be  used  to  develop  spiritual  manhood,  the  method 
to  be  used  is  not  to  run  away  from  it.  To  put  one's  self 
out  of  the  world  by  running  away  from  its  dangers  is  one 
way  of  saving  the  soul,  perhaps,  but  it  is  also  the  means 
of  so  starving  the  soul  that  it  becomes  hardly  worth  the 
saving.  The  secret  of  victory  over  solicitation  to  evil 
is  never  a  frontal  attack  upon  it,  but  an  exercise  of  the 


TEMPTATION  AS  OPPORTUNITY  249 

spiritual  resources  of  one's  own  manhood,  the  develop- 
ment of  which  the  temptation  is  designed  to  furnish. 

Very  beautifully  does  the  old  Greek  story  of  the  sirens 
illustrate  the  method  of  safety  in  all  temptation.  Both 
Ulysses  and  Orpheus  passed  the  sirens:  both  escaped 
falling  victims  to  the  allurements  of  evil,  but  by  very 
different  means.  When  Ulysses  realized  that  he  was  near 
the  sirens,  he  had  the  ears  of  his  sailors  stopped,  and 
caused  himself  to  be  bound  to  the  mast.  When  he  came 
within  hearing  of  the  siren-music,  he  was  charmed  with 
it  and  struggled  to  free  himself,  calling  loudly  to  the 
sailors  to  release  him.  The  sailors  not  hearing,  were 
untempted,  and  they  rowed  him  by.  That  is  all  one  can 
say.  "It  was  small  credit  to  the  character  of  Ulysses, 
though  much  to  his  prudential  foresight."  But  when 
Orpheus  came  within  hearing  of  the  siren-music,  he 
played  so  sweetly  upon  the  instruments  he  had  invented, 
that  he  triumphed  over  the  temptation  to  leave  the  ship, 
as  did  also  his  comrades.  Some  external  mechanical 
device  may  succeed  in  saving  a  man  from  defeat  to-day, 
but  such  a  victory  can  secure  him  no  immunity  to-morrow. 
The  only  safety  is  an  internal  refuge.  The  music  Jesus 
made  in  His  own  heart  by  the  choice  of  the  highest,  was 
His  sure  antidote  to  the  siren  song  of  evil. 

It  was  Orpheus  and  not  Ulysses,  who  so  used  the 
opportunity  which  temptation  presented  to  him,  as  to 


2SO  "TEMPTATION  IN  THE  WILDERNESS" 

develop  strength  of  manhood  for  the  next  experience. 
Every  temptation  may  be  either  a  tragedy  or  an  oppor- 
tunity. Every  temptation  sets  the  gate  of  sin  ajar; 
every  resistance  opens  the  gate  to  purity  and  strength. 
The  moment  of  a  man's  danger  is  always  the  moment  of 
his  possible  victory;  to  turn  away  from  the  tempter  is  to 
open  the  gate  of  blessedness;  therefore  it  is  written  that 
when  Christ  had  resisted  the  tempter,  on  the  instant 
angels  ministered  unto  Him.  It  is  only  to  the  men  who 
meet  temptation  as  Jesus  and  Orpheus  did,  that  angels 
minister.  When  the  fight  begins  within  himself  a  man's 
opportunity  has  come,  the  opportunity  to  acquire  king- 
ship over  himself,  and  only  when  a  man  is  king  over  him- 
self is  he  worth  something  to  the  world.  Every  tempta- 
tion squarely  faced  is  an  opportunity  to  make  a  new 
music,  acquire  a  new  power,  win  a  new  triumph. 

"Why  comes  temptation,  but  for  man  to  meet 
And  master  and  make  crouch  beneath  his  feet. 
And  so  be  pedestalled  in   triumph?     Pray, 
'Lead  us  into  no  such  temptation,  Lord !' 
Yea,  but,  O  Thou  whose  servants  are  the  bold. 
Lead  such  temptations  by  the  head  and  hair. 
Reluctant  dragons,  up  to  who  dares  fight, 
That  so  he  may  do  battle  and  have  praise!" 


XVIII 
The  Angels'  Kitchen 

From  a  painting  by  Murillo 


THE   ANGELS'  KITCHEN 
By  Murillo 

This  picture  is  one  of  a  series  of  eleven  scenes  from  the 
life  of  San  Diego,  with  which  Murillo  decorated  the  walls  of  a 
Franciscan  convent  in  Seville.  It  was  taken  from  Seville  by 
Marshal  Soult,  and  acquired  in  1858  by  the  Louvre  at  Paris, 
where  it  now  is.  The  original  is  five  feet  eleven  inches  by 
fourteen  feet  nine  inches.  The  picture  contains  Murillo's  two 
well-known  conceptions  of  angels.  The  tall  ones  he  used  as 
messengers  dispatched  to  earth  on  active  errands.  The  baby 
angels  he  regarded  as  the  "multitude  of  the  heavenly  host," 
whose  presence  gives  joy,  and  there  is  almost  no  religious  picture 
by  Murillo  in  which  their  sweet  faces  do  not  appear.  It  was 
story-telling  pictures  like  this  one,  which  helped  to  make  Murillo 
the  "people's  painter"  and  an  idol  of  his  own  generation. 


^ 

! 

i 

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1 

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HT'^^' 

i 


XVIII 

Interpretation 
The  Commonplace  Made  Uncommon 


"What  God  hath  cleansed,  make  not  thou  common." 

From  Peter's  Vision. 


"All  service  is  the  same  with  God, 
With  God,  whose  puppets,  best  and  worst, 
Are  we;  there  is  no  last  nor  first.  " 

Browning. 

"The  best  perfection  of  a  religious  man  is  to  do  common 
things  in  a  perfect  manner.  " 

BONAVENTURA. 

"Though  ye  have  lien  among  the  pots,  yet  shall  ye  be  as 
the  wings  of  a  dove,  covered  with  silver  and  her  feathers  with 
yellow  gold. " 

David. 

"Your  America  is  here  or  nowhere.  The  situation  that  has 
not  its  duty,  its  ideal,  was  never  yet  occupied  by  man.  Yes, 
here  in  thie  poor,  miserable,  hampered,  despicable  actual, 
wherein  even  now  thou  standest,  here  or  nowhere  is  thy  ideal; 
work  it  out  therefrom,  and  working,  believe,  live,  be  free.  " 

Carlyle. 

"What  is  the  common  process  of  love's  enlargement? 
Take  a  human  love;  take  what  we  generally  term  romantic  love. 
What  are  the  stages  through  which  it  is  wont  to  pass?  I  think 
there  are  four.  At  first  it  is  a  hope — somethmg  to  be  realized 
to-morrow.  Then  it  is  a  present  possession,  but  reserved  as  yet 
only  for  garden  hours  when  we  are  free  from  the  bustle  of  the 
crowd.  By  and  by  its  range  is  widened — it  becomes  a  stimulus 
for  the  great  duties  of  life ;  it  comes  out  from  the  garden  into  the 
city;  it  nerves  to  do  and  to  bear.  At  last  it  reaches  its  climax — 
it  comes  down  to  trifles.     It  glorifies  the  commonplace. " 

George  Matheson. 


(256) 


THE  COMMONPLACE  MADE  UNCOMMON 

Tennyson's  "Locksley  Hall"  has  always  been  loved. 
His  "Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years  After"  was  greeted  with 
a  storm  of  abuse,  especially  in  America.  That  the  two 
poems  met  such  different  receptions  shows  how  prevalent 
is  the  disease,  which  the  first  poem  fostered,  and  which 
the  second  poem  sought  to  correct. 

The  young  man  of  the  first  poem  is  inspired  with  a 
large  ideal,  but  he  is  in  the  midst  of  petty  and  dishearten- 
ing things  which  pain  him.  He  cannot  work  out  his 
ideal,  while  bound  to  these  clogging  and  hateful  experiences. 
The  world  has  a  few  good  people  in  it,  but  they  are  in  the 
"foremost  ranks  of  time,"  so  he  must  get  rid  of  the 
present  with  its  social  lies  and  its  sickly  forms.  He  is 
ashamed  that  he  has  ever  loved  so  slight  a  thing  as  a 
flesh  and  blood  woman  who  cannot  understand  him. 
He  must  get  rid  of  the  present,  and  go  on  knightly  wan- 
derings. He  is  not  sure  where  to  go,  he  is  only  sure  that 
if  he  can  get  far  enough  away  from  where  he  now  is,  he 
will  find  his  ideal,  which  is  not  to  be  caught  in  a  common- 
place way. 

In  the  second  poem,  this  youth,  now  an  old  man, 

17  (257) 


258  "THE  ANGEL'S  KITCHEN"— MURILLO 

comes  back  to  the  home  soil  to  learn,  that  from  it  the  very 
best  life  grows.  He  has  learned  that  the  very  best  things 
from  which  to  work  out  one's  ideals  are  those  very 
relationships  he  had  once  despised.  The  old  squire  had 
died  the  day  before.  He  was  here  in  time  for  the  funeral. 
He  pours  his  apology  into  the  deaf  ears. 

"Worthier  soul  was  he  than  I  am, 
Sound  and  honest  rustic  squire," 

Leonard,  the  grandson  of  the  new  poem,  is  bidden  to 
follow  the  example,  not  of  himself,  but  of  the  old  squire — 

"You,  my  Leonard,  use  and  not  abuse  your  day, 

Move  among  your  people,  know  them, 

Follow,  him  who  led  the  way. 

Strove   for   sixty   widowed   years 

To  help  his   homelier  brother  men 

Served  the  poor  and  built  the  cottage 

Raised   the   school,   and   trained   the   men." 

The  second  poem  is  the  truly  optimistic  poem,  for  it 
expresses  the  belief  that  the  commonplace  has  a  value 
and  a  charm,  that  the  present  concrete  world  is  not  a 
thing  to  be  run  away  from,  but  to  be  lived  with,  that  if 
God  is  not  here,  it  is  not  certain  He  is  anywhere  else. 

Murillo's  "Angels'  Kitchen"  is  sufficiently  described 
by  saying  that  it  is  Tennyson's  secor  '.  "Locksley  Hall" 
put  upon  canvas.    The  story  Murillo  uses  to  express  the 


THE  COMMONPLACE  MADE  UNCOMMON       259 

same  truth  is  simply  and  clearly  portrayed.  A  name 
famous  in  the  annals  of  Spain  for  two  hundred  years  before 
Murillo's  day  was  Diego,  a  man  who  was  a  lay  brother 
in  a  Franciscan  convent.  He  was  the  convent  porter 
who  prepared  the  frugal  meals  for  the  brotherhood,  a 
plain  man,  but  faithful  in  his  daily  tasks.  He  worked  as 
Gareth  worked  in  King  Arthur's  kitchen,  who  wrought 

"All  kind  of  service  with  a  noble  ease 
That  graced  the  lowliest  act  in  doing  it." 

One  day  the  story  goes,  a  marvel  befell  him.  When 
busy  with  his  cooking,  he  is  raised  in  a  heavenly  ecstasy, 
as  the  picture  represents  him,  while  angels  fill  the  room 
and  do  his  work.  One  of  them  goes  to  draw  water,  one 
attends  to  the  meat,  and  a  third  is  busy  with  mortar  and 
pestle.  Frolicsome  baby  angels  are  on  the  floor  busy 
with  the  vegetables,  and  turning  work  into  play.  On 
the  left  of  the  picture  three  men  enter  a  door  and  pause 
in  astonishment.  It  ought  not  to  be  astonishing  that  an 
exalted  motive  is  able  to  transform  the  most  commonplace 
task  and  make  it  uncommon. 

The  error  which  Tennyson's  poem  and  Murillo's 
picture  seek  to  correct  is  the  oldest  and  commonest  of 
mistakes;  the  mistake  of  taking  the  great  for  the 
little  and  the  little  for  the  great;  a  theme  which  our 
poets  and  teachers  have  never  ceased  to  write  about 


26o         "THE  ANGEL'S  KITCHEN"— MURILLO 

since  the  time  when  the  Man  of  Nazareth  touched  such 
common  things  as  stables  and  shepherds  and  work-benches 
with  a  new  beauty  and  meaning,  and  made  them  the  sym- 
bols of  a  new  day  for  the  world.  When  Thor  went  to 
Utgard,  the  land  of  the  giants,  according  to  the  Norse 
legend,  he  was  asked  to  take  part  in  the  games.  They 
handed  him  a  drinking-horn.  It  was  a  common  feat,  they 
said,  to  drink  this  at  one  draught.  Fiercely  did  Thor 
drink,  but  hardly  made  an  impression.  "You  are  a 
weak  child,"  they  said,  "can  you  lift  that  cat  you  see 
there?"  Small  as  it  seemed,  Thor  with  all  his  strength 
only  bent  up  the  creature's  back,  but  could  not  raise  its 
feet  off  the  ground.  "  You  are  no  man,"  said  the  Utgard 
people.  "This  old  woman  here  will  wrestle  with  you." 
Heartily  ashamed,  Thor  seized  the  haggard  woman  but 
could  not  throw  her.  Jotun,  the  chief,  escorting  Thor 
a  little  way  as  he  left,  said  to  him,  "  You  are  beaten,  then, 
but  do  not  be  too  much  ashamed,  for  there  was  illusion 
in  the  games.  The  horn  you  tried  to  drink  was  the  Sea. 
You  did  make  it  ebb  more  than  anyone  else.  The  Cat 
you  would  have  lifted  is  the  Great-World-Serpent.  And 
the  old  woman  is  Time,  Old-Age.  With  her  who  can 
wrestle?" 

This  is  a  legend's  picturesque  way  of  expressing  the 
simple  truth  that  a  deception  usually  blinds  men's  eyes 
to  the  real  significance  of  commonplace  tasks.     Most  men 


THE  COMMONPLACE  MADE  UNCOMMON      26 r 

see  their  significance,  as  Thor  did,  when  they  get  some 
distance  away  from  them.  At  the  time  of  the  Crimean 
War  the  two  generals,  Lord  Raglan  and  General  Todle- 
ben,  who  commanded  the  opposing  forces,  loomed 
large  in  the  world's  eye,  but  to-day  their  names  sound 
strangely  unfamiliar,  whilst  that  of  Florence  Nightingale 
is  a  household  word.  The  perspective  which  distance 
gives  has  given  the  true  value  to  Florence  Nightingale 
and  her  commonplace  work  of  giving  cups  of  water  to 
dying  soldiers. 

The  greatness  of  Florence  Nightingale  and  San  Diego 
lies  in  the  fact,  that  they  saw  the  charm  of  the  common- 
place while  they  were  close  to  it.  If  the  illusion,  that 
hangs  over  the  commonplace,  is  ever  pierced  it  can  be 
done  only  by  working,  as  they  worked,  from  a  high  motive; 
by  believing,  as  they  believed,  that  the  appointed  task 
is  worth  while;  by  seeing,  as  they  saw,  that  it  is  not  what 
one  does,  but  the  way  one  does  it,  that  counts  most; 
by  learning,  as  they  learned,  that  "messages  from  God 
are  not  to  be  read  through  the  envelope  in  which  they 
are  enclosed."  Antonio  Stradivarius,  sitting  at  his 
bench  day  after  day  in  the  little  Italian  town,  Cremona, 
making  violins,  seems  commonplace  employment;  but 
his  violins  have  immortalized  their  maker's  nam^e,  because 
he  worked  under  the  spell  of  a  vision  which  he  said  daily 
whispered  in  his   ear,   "God  could   not  make  Antonio 


262  "THE  ANGEL'S  KITCHEN"— MURILLO 

Stradivarius'  violins  without  Antonio. "  This  conviction 
not  only  made  his  work  enduring,  but  also  robbed  it  of  the 
commonplace,  even  while  he  did  it. 

The  truth  embodied  in  Murillo's  picture  is  common- 
place enough,  but  it  is  vital  to  any  true  living.  To  the 
mind  of  Jonathan  Edwards  the  very  essence  of  true 
religion  was  the  recognition  of  great  things  as  great,  and 
small  things  as  small,  and  acting  on  that  knowledge. 
The  truth  embodied  in  Murillo's  picture  is  the  truth  ex- 
pressed in  the  wise  saying  of  Edmund  Burke, — "If  you 
want  to  go  anywhere,  you  have  to  start  from  where  you 
are." 


XIX 
Christ  Bound  to  the  Column 

From  a  painting  by  II  Sodoma  (Brazzi) 


CHRIST  BOUND  TO  THE  COLUMN 
By    II  Sodoma 

This  picture  is  Sodoma's  masterpiece.  It  was  originally 
part  of  a  larger  fresco  in  the  cloister  of  San  Francesco  at  Siena. 
The  fresco  represented  the  "Judgment  of  Pilate,"  in  which  was 
seen  the  Hebrew  judicial  court,  with  Pilate  surrounded  by  a 
number  of  angry  Jews,  and  at  one  side  the  figure  of  the  bound 
and  buffeted  Christ.  The  painting  suffered  so  much  from  the 
damp  that,  in  1842,  the  figure  of  Christ  was  sawed  away  from 
the  wall  and  taken  to  the  public  gallery,  where  it  now  is.  It  is 
four  feet  seven  inches  high  by  three  feet  four  inches  wide.  From 
the  standpoint  of  art  it  is  notable  for  the  combination  of  the  per- 
fect technique  of  Greek  art  with  the  new  sense  of  spiritual  inten- 
sity. 


XIX 

Interpretation 
The    Invulnerable    Man 


"Then  the  soldiers  took  Jesus  into  the  palace  and  gathered 
unto  him  the  whole  cohort.  And  they  stripped  him  and  put 
on  a  scarlet  robe.  They  plaited  a  crown  of  thorns  and  put  it 
upon  his  head,  and  a  reed  in  his  right  hand;  and  they  spat  upon 
him,  and  took  the  reed  and  smote  him  on  the  head. " 

M.^TTHEW. 

"In  the  world  ye  shall  have  tribulation,  but  be  of  good 
cheer.     I  have  overcome  the  world. " 

Jesus. 

"After  all,  the  kind  of  world  one  carries  about  in  one's  self 
is  the  important  thing,  and  the  world  outside  takes  all  its  grace, 
color,  and  value  from  that.  " 

Lowell. 

"Therefore,  great  heart,  bear  up!     Thou  art  but  the  type 
Of  what  all  lofty  spirits  endure,  that  fain 
Would  win  men  back  to  strength  and  peace  through  love; 
Each  hath  his  lonely  peak,  and  on  each  heart 
Envy  or  scorn  or  hatred,  tears  lifelong 
With  vulture  beak;  yet  the  high  soul  is  left. " 

Lowell. 

"Begin  the  morning  by  saying  to  thyself,  I  shall  meet 
with  the  busybody,  the  ungrateful,  arrogant,  deceitful,  envious, 
unsocial;  all  these  happen  to  them  by  reason  of  their  ignorance 
of  what  is  good  and  evil.  But  I  who  have  seen  the  nature  of  the 
good,  that  it  is  beautiful,  and  of  the  bad,  that  it  is  ugly,  and  the 
nature  of  him  who  does  wrong,  that  it  is  akin  to  me,  not  only 
of  the  same  blood,  but  that  it  participates  in  the  same  intelligence 
and  the  same  portion  of  the  divinity,  I  can  neither  be  injured  by 
any  of  them,  for  no  one  can  fix  on  me  what  is  ugly,  nor  can  I 
be  angry  with  my  kinsman  nor  hate  him.  " 

Marcus  Aurelius. 


(268) 


THE  INVULNERABLE  MAN 

Among  the  most  pathetic  facts  of  Hfe  is  the  fact  that 
superiority  of  any  kind,  and  especially  moral  excellence, 
exasperates  others  and  provokes  their  envy.  "Mine 
heritage  is  unto  me  as  a  speckled  bird;  the  birds  round 
about  are  against  her."  The  bird  adorned  with  color,  for 
that  reason,  invites  attack  from  the  others.  To  be  hated, 
persecuted,  misunderstood,  while  they  live;  to  be  praised, 
rem.embered,  worshiped,  after  they  die,  has  not  been  an 
uncommon  fate  for  great  men.  Socrates  was  the  first 
citizen  of  Athens,  yet  his  fellow  citizens  put  him  to  death. 
Dante,  the  father  of  Italian  literature,  will  keep  green  the 
memory  of  Florence  wherever  books  are  known,  yet  he 
died  in  exile  from  his  native  city,  which  banished  the  living 
Dante,  and  then  begged  for  his  dead  body.  Joseph  is 
typical  of  a  long  list  of  men  through  the  centuries,  who 
have  duplicated  his  experience.  "Joseph  is  a  fruitful 
bough,  a  fruitful  bough  by  a  fountain;  his  branches  run 
over  the  wall.  The  archers  have  sorely  grieved  him,  and 
shot  at  him  and  persecuted  him." 

Jesus  was  no  stranger  to  this  experience,  but  rather 
its  best  illustration.     He  deserved  the  crown  of  a  king. 

(269) 


270  "CHRIST  BOUND  TO  THE  COLUMN" 

He  received  the  crown  of  thorns.  To  deserve  the  best 
and  to  receive  the  worst  at  the  hands  of  one's  fellov/s,  is 
calculated  to  create  a  doubt  of  the  very  foundations  on 
which  the  world  is  built.  Therefore,  it  is  an  achievement 
of  the  deepest  significance,  if  a  man,  in  the  face  of  this 
experience,  can  still  believe  that  goodness  and  not  blind 
chance  is  at  the  heart  of  things.  Burne-Jones  wrote  on 
his  mosaic  of  "Christ  on  the  Tree  of  Life"  his  favorite 
text  in  the  words  of  the  vulgate,  "hi  mundo  pressuram 
hahehitis,  sed  confidite;  ego  vici  mundum."  This  seemed 
to  him  to  express  the  burden  and  pressure  of  life,  and  it 
summed  up  for  him  the  heart  of  the  Christian  faith, — "I 
have  overcome  the  world  with  its  pressure."  Burne- 
Jones  saw  clearly  that,  if  Jesus  made  that  word  good,  then 
He  is  the  Christ.  Since  the  time  that  Jesus  prayed  for 
His  murderers,  the  world  has  not  been  nor  can  ever  be  the 
same  world. 

It  is  this  notable  achievement  of  Jesus,  which  So- 
doma's  picture  embodies  and  makes  more  real  than  a  mul- 
titude of  words  could  do.  The  picture  represents  Jesus 
clean  forspent  with  weariness  and  shame  at  the  cruel  and 
inhuman  treatment  He  received  from  the  soldiers.  It  is 
inexpressibly  pathetic.  So  weary  and  utterly  worn  out 
with  agony  is  the  master,  that  His  lips  have  fallen  apart 
from  mere  exhaustion,  and  He  is  kept  from  sinking  down 
upon  the  ground  only  by  the  cords  that  bind  Him.     Great 


THE  INVULNERABLE  MAN  271 

drops  of  blood  are  on  the  brow,  where  the  thorny  crown 
has  been  pressed.  The  intellectual  suffering  is  even 
more  apparent  than  the  physical.  The  chief  effect  pro- 
duced by  the  picture  on  the  mind  of  Hawthorne  was  the 
sense  of  loneliness.  It  is  the  universal  sorrow  that  all 
prophets  feel.  To  the  oriental  mind,  premature  sickness 
and  the  miscarriage  of  justice  were  the  two  classic  forms 
of  individual  suffering.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  Isaiah, 
in  his  matchless  picture  of  the  Great  Sufferer,  represents 
him  interchangeably,  now  as  a  sick  man,  and  now  as  a 
convict.  Both  of  these  elements  are  well  embodied  in 
Sodoma's  picture,  which  represents  the  hero  tortured 
with  a  sense  of  unjust  treatment  and  suffering  from  pre- 
mature physical  weariness,  which  made  him  seem  to  the 
Jews  a  man  fifty  years  old,  when  in  fact  he  had  only 
turned  thirty. 

The  point  in  the  picture  to  be  noted  is,  that  in  spite  of 
the  physical  and  mental  suffering,  the  artist,  in  some 
wonderful  way,  has  succeeded  in  representing  Jesus  not 
as  an  object  of  pity,  but  as  master  of  Himself.  Even  in 
this  extremity,  fainting  and  bleeding,  He  is  seen  still  to  be 
the  King.  From  His  tortured  face  the  high  soul  is  made 
to  shine  forth  with  serene  beauty  and  courage.  While 
a  mob  clamors  with  clenched  fists  for  this  blood  "Christ 
stood  unmoved,  as  the  sunlit  mountain  top,  by  the  storm 
that  beats  upon  its  base."     Only  the  outposts  of  His  life 


2,72  "CHRIST  BOUND  TO  THE  COLUMN" 

were  captured;  the  citadel  remained  intact.  His  heart 
was  fed  by  a  secret  stream  of  oil,  like  the  fire  in  Bunyan's 
House  of  the  Interpreter,  The  man  who  has  such  an 
internal  resource,  which  a  Hebrew  poet  called  "the  secret 
place  of  the  Most  High,"  is  invulnerable.  This  is  the  fact 
for  which  Sodoma's  picture  stands. 

Such  a  triumph  over  evil  can  be  achieved  only  by  the 
method  adopted  by  Jesus,  that  is,  by  transcending  the 
evil.  George  Matheson  thinks,  and  rightly  so,  that  the 
net  is  spread  in  vain  in  the  sight  of  any  bird,  not  because 
of  the  bird's  superior  wisdom,  but  because  of  its  method. 
Its  method  is  flight.  It  escapes  entanglement,  not  by 
flying  through  the  net,  but  by  taking  the  road  through  the 
upper  air.  The  method  of  the  wing  is  the  only  way  to 
transcend  the  nets  of  evil  and  calamity.  With  this 
method  in  mind  the  puzzling  statement  of  the  poet  in  the 
ninety-first  Psalm  becomes  clear,  "Thou  shalt  not  be 
afraid  for  the  terror  by  night,  nor  for  the  arrow  that 
flieth  by  day,  nor  for  the  pestilence  that  walketh  in 
darkness;  a  thousand  shall  fall  by  thy  side,  but  it  shall 
not  come  nigh  thee."  Does  the  poet  mean  t©  say  that 
piety  is  a  protection  against  small-pox?  That  pestilence 
and  destruction  do  not  enter  the  homes  of  the  good  as 
well  as  those  of  the  bad?  No,  he  means  to  say  that  the 
man  who  lives  in  the  secret  place  of  the  most  High  is  an 
invulnerable  man,  that  the  city  of  his  mind  has  not  been 


THE  INVULNERABLE  MAN  273 

invaded,  that  the  real  man  remains  undaunted.  His 
life  is  like  the  picture  of  a  cottage  on  a  sea-coast,  during 
a  storm.  "The  mountains  come  down  behind  it  and  the 
storm  breaks  overhead.  The  waves  are  thundering  on  the 
shore,  the  trees  groaning  and  sighing  in  the  wilderness 
around,  the  rains  descending  and  beating  upon  the  win- 
dows, while  all  the  convulsions, — the  darkness,  the  mid- 
night, the  waves,  the  tempests  and  the  scowling  sky- 
make  the  brightness  of  the  heart  more  bright  and  the 
burning  fire  more  pleasant  and  the  happy  circle  around  it 
more  blissful."  Sodoma  represents  the  inside  of  Jesus' 
life  to  be  like  the  inside  of  this  cottage.  That  is  why 
He  was  invulnerable. 

The  truth  embodied  in  the  picture  makes  apparent 
the  philosophy  of  all  true  courage.  Physical  suflfering 
borne  with  calmness  was  constantly  represented  by 
Greek  artists.  It  was  stoical  indifference  to  pain.  In 
Sodoma's  picture  we  have  something  very  different. 
The  great  merit  of  his  artistic  achievement  is  the  com- 
bination of  agonizing  susceptibility  to  pain  and  serene 
triumph  over  it.  This  is  true  courage.  Indeed  there  can 
be  no  true  courage  without  fear.  It  is,  of  course,  possible 
for  a  man  to  be  without  fear,  who  has  no  secret  source  of 
strength  to  overcome  it,  as  Jesus  had.  In  "Old  Mor- 
tality," for  example,  when  Bothwell  is  slain  by  Balfour 
of    Burley — "Die!   wretch!  die!  cried    the  convenanter. 


274  "CHRIST  BOUND  TO  THE  COLUMN" 

die  like  the  beasts  that  perish,  hoping  nothing,  believing 
nothing, — and  fearing  nothing,"  replied  the  dying  man. 
This  was  a  coarse-fibered  defiance  of  fate,  but  it  was  not 
courage.  To  be  conscious  of  the  danger  and  fear  the  pain, 
and  notwithstanding  the  fear,  to  face  the  danger,  that  is 
courage.  "Heroism  is  not  the  absence  of  fear,  but  the 
conquest  of  it." 

Such  triumph  and  courage  come  only  when  a  man's 
spirit,  like  that  of  Jesus,  is  God-sheltered.  The  only  way 
to  be  immune  against  dangers  and  vexations  is  to  trans- 
scend  them,  is  to  live  on  the  top  floor,  as  Henry  Drum- 
mond  loved  to  put  it.  To  be  inspired  by  a  divine  enthu- 
siasm makes  a  man  invulnerable  against  the  wounds  of 
outward  calamity.  He  is  like  the  boy  who  brought  the 
message  to  Napoleon.  Dying  of  wounds  received  while 
planting  the  flag  over  the  market-place  at  Ratisbon,  the 
soldier,  nevertheless,  riding  at  full  speed,  succeeds  in 
reaching  the  Emperor. 

"Well,"  cried  he,  "Emperor,  by  God's  grace 

"We've  got  you  Ratisbon ! 
"The  '  marshal's  '  in  the  market-place, 

"And  you'll  be  there  anon.  " 

Borne  up  and  absorbed  by  the  passion  of  his  heart,  he  is 
impervious  and  superior  even  to  death  wounds. 


THE  INVULNERABLE  MAN  275 

'The  chief's  eye  flashed;  but  presently 
Softened  itself,  as  sheathes 
A  film  the  mother-eagle's  eye 
When  her  bruised  eaglet  breathes: 
'You're  wounded!'  'Nay,'  the  soldier's  pride 
Touched  to  the  quick,  he  said: 
'I'm  killed,  Sire!'  and  his  chief  beside 
Smiling,  the  boy  fell  dead." 


XX 

Destiny  and  Humanity 

From  a  painting  by  Jef.  Leempoels 


i 


DESTINY  AND  HUMANITY 
By   Jef.  Leempoels 


mta!  ■  .  !'"""""■  '"  ■'O^-"-"'  -e  m.er„a,i„„a,  con,- 

ss,onal  arfse.  A  g„at  European  pai.,er  said  ,ha.  .he  hisLy 
o  pa.„„„g  wouM  have  ,„s,  something  if  ,his  picure  had  „  vlr 
been  pa.n,ed.  I,  has  equally  appealed  ,o  people  „i.h  no  "ch 
n.ca  .nowledge  o,  an.-  The  people  a.  S,.  LoL  cailed  i.  "he 
M  Le'eJ  ,"  '"  """"  """  '■°'""-"'  '=«'""  '»'  '"is  name, 
■n     8,4.     Each  hand  was  painted  from  a  separate  model.     The 

';:";:  "t,,""  ""•"  '-^"^^ "«"  ^^  "■-  '«>  -  '-ches 

"    Coel!  '^  ""°"'"'  ""'  ^^  •"'  --  ~-  - 


XX 

Interpretation 
The  Inspiration  of  the  Imperfect 


"Every  attainment  is  only  a  camp  for  the  night." 

Markham. 

"Not  that  I  have  already  obtained  or  am  already  made  per- 
fect, but  1  press  on  toward  the  upward  calling  of  God.  " 

Paul. 

"A  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp  or  what's  a  heaven 
for?" 

Browning. 

"Better  have  failed  in  the  high  aim,  as  I, 
Than  vulgarly  in  the  low  aim  succeed.  " 

Browning. 

"That  low  man  seeks  a  little  thing  to   do, 
Sees  it  and  does  it: 
This  high  man,  with  a  great  thing  to  pursue, 
Dies  ere  he  knows  it. " 

Browning. 

"Then  life  is, — to  wake,  not  sleep 
Rise  and  not  rest,  but  press 
From  earth's  level  where  blindly  creep 

Things  perfected,  more  or  less 
To  the  heaven's  height,  far  and  steep. " 

Browning. 

"O  heavenly  power  of  human  wishes! 
For  as  wings  to  birds,  and  as  fins  to  fishes, 
Are  a  man's  desires  to  the  soul  of  a  man, 
'Tis  by  these  and  by  these  alone,  it  can 
Wander  at  will  through  its  native  sphere. 
Where  the  beauty  that's  far  is  the  bliss  that  is  near.  " 

Owen  Meredith. 


(282) 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  IMPERFECT 

Shelley,  shortly  before  he  died,  had  a  curious  dream, 
in  which  he  saw  his  spectral  self  coming  toward  his 
conscious  self.  It  lifted  the  hood  from  the  brow  and 
said  to  the  conscious  self — "Art  thou  satisfied?"  "Art 
thou  satisfied?"  All  normal  men  have  had  the  same 
dream.  Unfulfilled  longing  is  a  human  characteristic. 
In  every  human  eye  there  is  a  look  of  expectancy.  Nov- 
alis  once  began  to  write  the  story  of  man's  search  for 
perfection  and  happiness.  The  first  book  he  called 
"Expectancy."  The  second  book  he  called  "Fulfill- 
ment," but  in  the  middle  of  the  second  volume  he  laid 
down  his  pen,  and  never  finished  it.  Dr.  Van  Dyke,  who 
has  recently  called  attention  to  it,  has  himself  added  a 
chapter  to  the  book  in  his  "Blue  Flower,"  but  the  book 
is  still  incomplete  and  must  remain  so,  until  man  arri\-es 
at  the  point  of  fulfilled  desire. 

It  is  this  fact,  universally  true,  of  man's  yearning 
and  searching  after  something  he  does  not  now  have, 
which  is  embodied  in  Leempoel's  picture,  "The  Hands," 
a  truth  which,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  has  never  been 
represented  in  any  other  picture.     In  the  center  of  the 

(283) 


284    "DESTINY  AND  HUMANITY"— LEEMPOELS 

picture  two  red-gloved  hands  hold  aloft  the  crozier  and 
crucifix,  a  white-gloved  hand  holds  the  scepter,  symbols 
of  the  church  and  state,  the  two  institutions  among  men, 
through  which  they  are  best  working  out  their  desires  and 
which  represent  their  best  ideals.  Around  these  are 
grouped  all  kinds  of  uplifted  hands,  reaching  out  for 
something  they  desire  but  have  not.  There  are  the 
weather-beaten  hands  of  the  toiler,  and  the  delicately- 
shaped  fingers  of  refined  women.  Sick  hands  hold 
up  a  box  of  jewels,  a  gift  freely  offered  for  lost  health. 
Manacled  hands  reach  out  for  freedom.  One  hand  is 
putting  on  another  a  wedding  ring,  thinking  in  wedded 
love  to  find  the  desired  goal.  A  veiled  hand  of  mourning  is 
pleading  for  comfort. 

On  the  left  side  of  the  picture  are  Buddha,  Vishnu, 
and  the  imaged  gods  of  Egypt,  with  palms  and  smoke 
of  incense,  symbols  of  an  aspiration,  however  faint  or 
blind,  for  human  betterment.  On  the  picture's  right 
are  the  hands  which  represent  the  destructive  forces  of 
human  society.  The  hands  of  the  assassin  hold  high  the 
hatchet,  revolver  and  knife.  They,  too,  lift  asking  hands 
to  Fate.  They,  too,  aspire,  but  aspire  negatively,  hoping 
to  reach  their  goal  by  pulling  down,  rather  than  building 
up.  The  tragedy  of  man's  search  for  his  desired  good, 
does  not  lie  in  the  fact  that  his  search  is  never  wholly 
successful,  but  in  the  fact  that  many  do  not  know  what 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  IMPERFECT       285 

they  ought  to  seek.  By  the  striking  symbol  of  upHfted 
hands  the  picture  embodies  the  universal  truth  that  in 
every  human  heart  is  an  illimitable  longing,  never  sat- 
isfied, and  that  every  man  searches  unceasingly  for  some- 
thing he  never  possesses. 

The  artist  has  represented  Fate,  or  Destiny,  or  the 
Over-Heart,  or  God,  in  the  mysterious  face,  which  looks 
out  of  the  picture,  as  from  the  center  of  a  sun,  a  face 
conscious  of  man's  striving;  a  face  burdened  and  seamed 
by  the  knowledge  of  his  unsatisfied  yearning,  but  still 
inscrutable.  The  eyes  are  piercing,  but  neither  soft  nor 
stern.  Carlyle  asks  why  does  the  Over-Heart  "answer 
never  a  word?"  The  picture  does  not  say  that  Destiny 
makes  no  answer  at  all,  for  the  sunlight  falls  on  the  cen- 
tral group  of  uplifted  hands,  but  the  answer  is  not  com- 
plete enough  to  prevent  the  hands  from  still  pleading.  It 
seems  to  be  the  clear  intention  that  men  should  not  now 
reach  their  goal.  "There  is  indeed  one  element  in  human 
destiny,"  says  Stevenson,  "that  not  blindness  itself  can 
controvert.  Whatever  else  we  are  intended  to  do,  we  are 
not  intended  to  succeed.     Failure  is  the  fate  allotted." 

Jesus  presented  to  His  followers  an  unattainable 
ideal;  "Be  ye  perfect  as  your  Father  in  Heaven  is  per- 
fect." When  Wu  Ting  Fang  was  in  America  he  criti- 
cised Christianity  by  comparing  it  with  Confucianism.  In 
his  judgment  it  was  an  advantage  that  the  ideals  of  Confu- 


286    "DESTINY  AND  HUMANITY"— LEEMPOELS 

danism  were  human  attainments.  But  Christianity,  he 
thought,  made  the  stupendous  blunder  of  presenting  to 
men  an  impracticable  ideal.  So  far  as  the  fact  itself  is 
concerned,  Wu  Ting  Fang  saw  clearly  what  is  the  funda- 
mental distinction  between  the  Christian  view  of  life  and 
every  other  view.  Christianity  spoiled  the  peace  of  the 
world  by  causing  men  to  aspire  for  the  unattainable. 

To  rule  human  life,  not  by  what  is  easy  of  attain- 
ment, but  by  what  is  impossible  of  attainment,  is  not  only 
not  a  stupendous  blunder,  but  the  highest  wisdom.  For 
whenever  a  man  is  satisfied  with  any  achievement,  he 
makes  that  achievement  his  ideal  for  the  future,  and 
never  goes  beyond  it.  His  ideal  has  dwindled  down  to  the 
measure  of  his  present  power  to  perform.  It  was  this 
danger  of  which  Mazzini  was  thinking  when  he  said — 
"The  morrow  of  victory  is  more  perilous  than  its  eve." 
To  reach  one's  ideal  is  a  personal  calamity.  It  ought 
to  be  too  high  for  attainment. 

Every  true  man  leads  a  pilgrim  life.  "As  a  pil- 
grim," said  Dante,  "who  goes  along  a  path  where  he 
never  journeyed  before,  may  believe  every  house  that  he 
sees  in  the  distance  to  be  his  inn,  and,  not  finding  it  to  be 
so,  may  direct  his  belief  to  the  next,  and  so  travel  on 
from  house  to  house  until  he  reach  the  inn,  even  so  our 
Soul,  as  soon  as  it  enters  the  untrodden  path  of  this  life, 
directs  its  eyes  to  its  supreme  good,  the  sum  of  its  day's 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  IMPERFECT       287 

travel  to  good;  and  therefore  whatever  thing  it  sees,  which 
seems  to  have  in  itself  some  goodness,  it  thinks  to  be  its 
supreme  good.  And  because  its  knowledge  at  first  is 
imperfect,  owing  to  want  of  experience  and  want  of  in- 
struction, good  things  that  are  but  little  appear  great 
to  it;  and  therefore  in  the  first  place  it  begins  to  desire 
those.  So  we  see  little  children  desire  above  all  things 
an  apple;  and  then,  growing  older,  they  desire  a  little 
bird,  and  then,  being  older,  desire  a  beautiful  garment; 
and  then  a  horse,  and  then  a  wife,  and  then  moderate 
wealth,  and  then  greater  wealth,  and  then  still  more. 
And  this  happens  because  in  none  of  these  things  is 
found  that  for  which  search  is  made,  and  as  we  live  on, 
we  seek  further." 

"Though  I  do  my  best  I  shall  scarce  suceed. 
But  what  if  1  fail  of  my  purpose  here? 
It  is  but  to  keep  the  nerves  at  strain, 
To  dry  one's  eyes  and  laugh  at  a  fall. 
And  baffled,  get  up  and  begin  again, — 
So  the  chase  takes  up  one's  life,  that's  all." 

Men  are  intended  always  to  fail,  in  order  that  their 
nerves  might  be  kept  at  strain  in  their  pursuit  of  the  best, 
which  is  ever  just  beyond  them.  Paul  said  the  mark 
he  set  himself  was  the  prize  of  the  upward  calling  of  God. 
The  call  was  a  continuous  process.  His  goal  was  never 
stationary.    The  best  man,  be  he  even  a  Paul,  finds  him- 


288     "DESTINY  AND  HUMANITY"— LEEMPOFXS 

self  always  a  failure,  for  when  bethinks  he  has  reached  his 
goal,  he  discovers  that  it  is  not  there,  but  has  moved  just 
ahead  of  him,  beckoning  him  ever  upward  and  on.  This 
is  the  great  truth  of  Leempoel's  picture.  Unique  as  is 
the  impression  which  the  hands  make  on  one,  and  haunting 
as  is  the  face,  a  face  never  to  be  forgotten ;  yet  when  one 
looks  at  the  picture  as  a  whole  the  thing,  which  stands  out 
chiefly;  the  thing  which  constitutes  the  eye  of  the  picture, 
is  the  radiant  light  on  the  distant  horizon,  placed  there  by 
design,  far  away  from  where  men  are  lifting  unavailing 
hands,  in  order  to  allure  them  from  where  they  now  are 
and  encourage  them  to  press  on. 

To  place  before  men  an  unattainable  ideal  is  not  a 
legitimate  cause  for  discouragement,  but  the  very 
opposite.  It  is  the  greatest  inspiration  for  noble  effort. 
In  the  Christian  view,  not  failure  but  low  aim  is  crime. 
Paul  says,  "  I  am  glad  I  am  a  failure,  glad  I  have  not  reach- 
ed the  end  of  my  ideals,  glad  the  best  is  yet  before  me." 

"For  thence — a  paradox 
Which  comforts  while  it  mocks, — 
Shall  life  succeed  in  that  it  seems  to  fail: 
What  I  aspired  to  be 
And  was  not,  comforts  me." 

The  desire  to  be  what  one  is  not,  brings  comfort, 
because  it  inspires.     Whatever  temporary  expression  has 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  IMPERFECT       289 

been  given  to  the  hope  of  a  millennium,  the  inspiration 
of  it  in  all  noble  hearts  is  their  inability  to  concur  in  the 
present  condition  of  things.  Healthy  discontent  with 
things  as  they  are,  breeds  hope  of  better  things  and  inspires 
the  effort  to  work  for  them.  "So  many  promising 
youths,"  said  Emerson,  "but  never  a  perfect  man," 
not  because  the  man  did  not  do  well,  but  because  the 
youth's  promise  was  too  large  for  the  man's  peformance. 
Does  man's  inability  to  express  his  love  show  what  a 
poor,  weak  thing  love  is?  It  shows  just  the  opposite. 
It  is  not  love's  poverty  but  love's  riches,  that  make  it 
incapable  of  perfect  expression.  The  greater  the  passion 
of  love,  the  greater  is  the  failure  to  express  it. 

This  is  the  inspiration  of  the  imperfect.  A  man's 
success  is  not  to  be  measured  by  his  achievement,  but 
by  his  striving,  even  his  unsuccessful  striving.  Robert 
E.  Speer  says  that  hundreds  of  men  in  India  write  their 
names,  "Failed,  B.  A."  "Failed,  M.  A."  That  means 
they  tried  for  the  degree  of  Bachelor,  or  Master  of  Arts, 
but  did  not  get  it.  They  count  it  an  honor,  however, 
even  to  have  honestly  tried.  Failure  is  never  a  disgrace, 
if  it  be  faithful  failure.  The  fitting  epitaph  for  such  men 
was  once  written  by  Stevenson — "Here  lies  one  who 
meant  well,  tried  a  little,  failed  much — an  epitaph," 
he  adds,  "of  which  no  man  need  be  ashamed."  He 
need  not  be  ashamed,  because  such  failure  is  due  to  the 

19 


290      "DESTINY  AND  HUMANITY"— LEEMPOELS 

fact  that  he  has  the  desire  of  an  angel,  but  only  the 
strength  of  a  man.  To  have  had  desires  of  such  propor- 
tions, that  there  is  neither  time  nor  room  here  to  fulfil 
them,  is  itself  a  pledge  of  their  immortality  and  their 
ultimate  fulfillment. 

"The  high  that  proved  too  high. 
The  heroic  for  earth  too  hard, 
Are  music  sent  up  to  God 
By  the  lover  and  the  bard; 
Enough  that  he  heard  it  once 
We  shall  hear  it  by  and  by." 


Index 


I 


INDEX 


"Angels '  Kitchen  " 

picture   of,    253. 

interpretation  of,  257. 
Angelo's    "Last    Judgment," 

140. 
Appreciation,  principle  of,  89. 
Apple  blossoms,   color  of,   22. 
Arnold  of  Rugby,   201. 
Art,  an  interpreter,  19. 
Art  and  religion,  29. 
Art  does  not  preach,   26. 
"Art  for  art's  sake,  "  23,  28. 
Art  is  prophetic,  24. 
Art,  the  use  of,  21,  22. 
Atonement,  Day  of,   121. 
Aurelius,    Marcus,    268. 


Beauty,  a  moral  necessity, 
24,  25. 

Beauty,  universal  love  of,  25. 

Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  226. 

Bible,  the,  why  called  eternal 
literature,  30. 

Bond  of  trust,  a,  204. 

Bona  Ventura,  256. 

Browning,  Mrs.  E.  B.,  193 

Browning,  Robert,  22,  36,  48, 
49,  88,  96,  99,  120,  141, 
155.  194,  212,  238,  250, 
256,  275,  282,  287,  288, 
290. 

Bunyan,  John,  39,  272. 


Burke,    Edmund,    262. 

Bume-Jones,  270. 

Burns,  Robert,  72,     100,     162, 

164. 
Bushnell,  Horace,  134. 

C 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  134,  162,  212, 

256,  285. 
Carlyle's   confession,    231. 
Character  not  transferable,  50. 
"Christ    in    Gethseniane" 

picture  of,  171. 

interpretation  of,  175. 
' '  Christ  hound  to  the  column  " 

picture  of,    265. 

interpretation  of,  269. 
"Christ  and  the  Fishermen" 

picture  of,  197. 

interpretation  of,  201  . 
Christians,  Chinese,   91. 
Christianity's  high  ideal,   286. 
Church,  a  patron  of  art,  16. 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,   18. 
Commonplace    made    uncom- 
mon, the  257. 
Confucianism,  285. 
"Coniston, "  Churchill's,  86. 
Conflicts,  cause  of,  215. 
Courage,  Greek  and  Christian, 

273- 
Critical  moment,  the  real,  52. 
"Crossing  the   Rubicon,"   49, 

227. 


(293) 


a  94 


INDEX 


Cross,   meanings  of   the,    191, 

192. 
Culture  and  the  cross,  190. 

D 

Dante,  96,  120,  148,  189,  218, 

248,  286. 
Dante  and  Beatrice,   113. 
Dante's  one  Smile,  189. 
"David  and  Saul" 

picture  of,  93. 

interpretation  of,  95. 
Dawson,  Dr.  J.  W.,  200. 
Death,  an  advantage,  112. 
Death,  a  mere  incident,  149. 
Death,  as  a  private  tutor,  109. 
"Death  staying  hand  of  sculp- 
tor" 

picture  of,  145. 

interpretation  of,  149. 

symbolism  of,  151. 
Death,  why  woman  is  symbol 

of,  153- 
Death,  why  Bible  never  asso- 
ciates   prophets    with, 

154. 
Deliverance  through  love,  85. 
"Destiny  and  Humanity" 

picture  of,   279. 

interpretation  of  281. 
Dickens,  Charles,  41. 
' '  Dream  of  Gerontius,  "  179. 
Dreams,  the  use  of,  135. 

Jacob's,  137,  139.  ^ 

warning  of,   136. 

Bible's  use  of,  sane,    131 
"Dr.   Jekyl  and   Mr.    Hyde," 
214. 

E 
"  Ecce  Homo  " 

picture  of,  223. 

interpretation  of,  225. 


Edwards,  Jonathan,  262. 
Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  289. 
Emerson's  "Sphinx, "  217. 
Emerson  and  Longfellow,  loi. 
Enemy  of  himself,  an,  121. 
Energy  of  position,  65. 
Envy,  fruit  of,  269. 
Epictetus,  60. 
Epicurean  apathy,  166. 
Expectation,  as  a  law,  203. 
Eyes  of  the  heart,  63. 

F 

Face,  the  language  of  the,  97. 
Failure,  the  value  of,  286. 
Fairbaim,  Dr.  A.  M.,  174,  176, 

226. 
Faith  in  human  nature,  203. 
"Finding  Christ  in  the  Tem- 
ple, "  22. 
Fiske,  John,  153. 
Forgiveness,  object  of,  126. 

something    better     than, 
126. 

problem  of,  177. 
Fox,  George,  76. 
Forsyth,  Principal,  14,  108. 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  148. 

G 

Goethe,  J.  W.  Von,  163,  192. 
Goethe's  "Faust,  "  213. 
Great  men,  fate  of,  269. 

H 

Hall,  G.  Stanley,  8,  28. 
Happiness,  a  by-product,  163. 
Happy  men,  who  are  the,  193. 
Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  217. 
Hero,  loneliness  of  a,  178. 
Heroism  of  Jesus,  the,  175. 


INDEX 


'95 


Holy  Grail,  the,  6i. 
"Hope" 

picture  of,  33. 

interpretation  of,  37. 

indestructible,  37. 

its  function,  38. 
Hugo,   Victor,    77,     100,     148 

155.    213. 
Hume,  David,  36, 
Human  heart,    a    battle-field, 

213. 
Hunt,  Holman,  22. 
Hyde,  William  DeWitt,  167. 


"In  Memoriam, "  Tennyson's, 

ISO- 
Inspiration   of   the   imperfect, 

283. 
"Incident      of     the      French 

Camp,"   274. 


"Jacob's  Ladder" 

picture  of,  131. 

interpretation  of,  133. 
James,  William,  188. 
Jesus,  a  disturber,  230. 
Jesus,  facing  death,  175. 
Jesus,  temptation  of,  245. 
Job,    134. 

Job's  comfort,  151. 
Johnson's  "Rasselas, "  165. 
Judges,  English,  77. 
Judgment,  limited,  76. 


Lanier,  Sidney,  174. 
"La  Saisiaz,  "  Browning's,  150. 
"Legend  of  Jubal,  "  the,   112. 
"Letter  to  the  Romans,"  the, 
214. 


"Lewis  Rand,  "Johnston's,  88. 
Lindsey,  Judge,  205. 
"Locksley  Hall,"  Tennyson's, 

257- 
Logic  of  the  heart,  the,  154. 
"Love  and  Death" 

picture  of,   105. 

interpretation  of,  107. 

origin  of  picture,  no. 
Love,  creative  power  of,  88. 

is  not  blind,  89. 

vicarious,  99. 
Love,  the  sin  against,  125. 
Love,  two  Greek  words  for, 202. 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  53,  no. 

M 

Machiavelli,  41. 
' '  Magdalene,  The  " 

picture  of,  79. 

interpretation  of,  83. 
Man,  the  invulnerable,  269. 
Man,  a  disappointed,  189. 
Markham,  Edwin,  188,  282. 
Martineau,    James,     25,     108, 

212. 
Marys,  the  two,  85,  86. 
Maurice,  F.  D.,  239. 
Matheson,     George,     72,     203, 

256,  272. 
Mazzini,  288. 
Meredith,  Owen,  220,  282, 
Milmore,  Martin,  145. 
Milton,  John,  243,  247. 
Miser,  the,  i66. 
"Moly, "  the  flower,  66. 
"Musical    instruments,"    193. 
Mystery,  a  comfort,  151. 

N 

Nightingale,   Florence,    261. 
Norse  legend,  a,  260. 


296 


INDEX 


Novalis,  283. 
Noyes,  10. 


O 


Omar  Khayyam,  120,  164. 


Painting,     different     from     a 

photograph,   18. 
Pastime,  meaning  of,  164. 
Pericles,  149. 

Philemon,  Paul's  letter  to,  25. 
Pictures,  need  of  the  best,  17. 
Pictures,  time  savers,  15. 
Pictures,  two  elements  in,  18. 
Pilate,  his  fate,  229. 

his  character,  226. 
Plato,  213. 

Plato's  good  juror.   63. 
Poetry,  Greek,   109. 
Pope,  Alexander,  36. 
Punishment,  a  novelist's  view 

of,  124. 
' '  Pursuit  of  Pleasure  " 

picture  of,  159. 

interpretation  of,  163. 

R 

"Ratisbon, "  274. 
Rehgion  of  to-morrow  morn- 
ing, the,  37. 
Rembrandt,  two  portraits  of, 

123. 
Rice,  Mrs.  Alice  Hegan,  205. 
Riley,  James  Whitcomb,  163. 
Rivers  of  the  Inferno,  the,  189. 
Robertson,  F.  D.,   174. 
"Ruins,  The" 

picture  of,  67. 

interpretation  of,  71. 
Ruskin,  John,  148,  180,  188. 


Rutherford,  Mark,  25,  86,  162, 
212,  238. 


San  Diego,  259. 

Satan,  portraits  of,  243. 

the  use  of,  244. 
Saul, "  Browning's,  98. 
"Scapegoat,  The" 

picture  of,  117. 

interpretation  of  119. 

only  one  of  its  kind,  116. 

symbolism  of,  122. 
Sermon    on    the    Mount,    the, 

203. 
Shakespeare,     William,      238, 

242. 
Shelley,  283. 
"Sic  Transit  Gloria  Mundi " 

picture  of,  185. 

interpretation   of,    189. 
"Sir  Galahad" 

picture  of,  57. 

interpretation  of  61. 
"St.  Michael  and  the  Dragon" 

picture  of,  209. 

interpretation  of,  211. 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  200, 

285. 
Stradivarius,  Antonio,  261. 
Sympathy,  the  measure  of,  73 

an  act  of  imagination,  75, 


' '  Temptation  in  the  wilderness  " 

picture  of,  235. 

interpretation  of,  237. 
Temptation    as    opportunity, 

239- 
Temptation,  meanings  of,  240. 
Temptation,  the  use  of,  248. 
Tennyson,  20,  48,  60,  127,  257. 


INDEX 


297 


They  who  trust  us  educate  us, 

201. 
Thoreau,  Henry  David,  200. 
Tissot,  James,  73. 

U 

Ulysses  and  Orpheus,  249. 
Unavoidable  question,  an,  227. 

V 
VanDyke's ' '  Blue  Flower,  "283 


W 

Watts,  George  F.,  30. 
Webster's  Reply  to  Hayne,  52. 
Whittier,  John  G.,  84. 
' '  Wise  and  Foolish  Virgins  " 

picture  of,  45. 

interpretation  of,  49. 
Wise  man,  the  good  man  is  the, 

64. 
Wu   Ting   Fang,    his   view   of 
Christianity,  285. 


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